PART
II. Private Aviation
Max
Westheimer Field at Norman, Oklahoma, had been a Navy flight-training base
during WW II. The large dirt mounds used for machine gun training were still at
the far west end of the airfield. The land was granted to the University of
Oklahoma by the government after the Navy pulled out in the late 1940s. A few
private aircraft and the University of Oklahoma Flying Club were the only
aircraft that used the airfield.
As an OU student, I was eligible to join the
flying club and did. I didn’t really have a goal of working on my private
pilot's license I just wanted to learn how to fly an airplane. The flying club
members were mostly a rag-tag bunch of young wanna-be aviators like myself. A
few faculty members belonged, but the club was not officially sanctioned by the
University.
The
flying club consisted of an Aeronca Model 7AC Champion and a Taylorcraft Model
BC12. In order to join the club, I had to meet with a fellow by the name of
Burrell Tibbs, the club president. Everyone called him Burl. He worked as a
freelance mechanic for the Fixed Base Operator (FBO). When I located him, he
and another mechanic were working on a replica of an old Curtis pusher in a
large hangar.
Burrell
was also the official club check pilot and flight instructor. He was in his
seventies and claimed to have taught Wiley Post how to fly and after listening
to some of his flying stories, I’m sure he did. The membership fee was $25 and
the initiation interview amounted to a single question asked by Burl, "So
you want to learn to fly?" I answered in the affirmative and we proceeded
to an Aeronca Champ N85066.
After
a brief walk around preflight, we climbed into the Aeronca Champ. Burl asked me
if I had ever flown an airplane before and I replied that I had not, but I had
read a book about flying and was pretty sure that I could.
Burl
taxied the plane out and we took off. When we reached an altitude of about
200-feet above-ground-level (AGL) Burl let go of the controls and said,
"If you know how to fly, go ahead."
With
great confidence, I grabbed the controls and took over. I shortly found myself
all over the sky as I was seriously over controlling. When Burl finally stopped
laughing, he said, "Ok, I've got it. Now let's go out to the practice area
and learn how to fly."
The
practice area was out over the wide sandy bottom of the South Canadian River.
There were two towers that suspended an oil pipeline across the river and they
made an excellent reference points for practicing coordinated figure eight
pylon turns. When practicing stalls and failing to make a proper stall
recovery, I learned to lean forward slightly because Burl, seated in the back
seat of the tandem Champ, was notorious for thumping the student on the back of
the head.
I
found out after talking with other students that was his standard method of
teaching. The rest of the training consisted of going ring-around at Westheimer
Airfield, practicing touch and go landing, until I could do them in my sleep
Burl
liked to eat lunch at a little airport cafe at the Downtown Airpark in Oklahoma
City. If I scheduled instruction with him around lunchtime, we’d land there and
take a lunch break. One hot afternoon, we landed, had lunch and got back into the
plane to head back to Max Westheimer Field. As the saying goes, if you’re
looking for an airport, find a power line and there will be one nearby.
Downtown Airpark was the prime example. At the north end of the field were some
very large high-tension power lines.
I
took off down the runway and lifted into the air, but the Champ wasn’t climbing
very well. We were headed straight for the power lines. That little 65 hp
engine carrying two big guys on a hot afternoon and in the hands of an
unskilled pilot just wasn’t going to climb that steep. Determining that I had a
problem, I glanced rearward at Burl grinning in the back seat.
"I
got it," he said, as he took the controls and flew us under the power
lines. Later, I found out that this was one of Burl's favorite tricks and I was
not the first student he had initiated by flying them under the Downtown
Airpark power lines.
On
March 11th 1957, I scheduled a dual training flight with Burl and as it
happened this was his birthday. He told me I was his last training flight for
the day and he intended to have some birthday cake and a few beers to celebrate
as soon as we completed our flight. I doubt Burl had kept track of how many
hours I had logged to date.
After
a couple touch and go landings, Burl told me to taxi back to the hanger and I
figured he was cutting our session short so that he could leave to celebrate.
As we approached the hanger, he told me not to cut the engine and to let him
out.
Burl
opened the door. He turned and looked at me and asked me the same question he
had asked the first day we met, "So you want to be a pilot?"
"Yes
sir, I do," I replied.
"Well,”
Burl said sarcastically, “then why don’t you let me out of here before you kill
the both of us!" This was Burl’s way of telling me to go shoot some
landings by myself.
As I
rolled down the runway solo for the first time, I remember thinking that I
would pretend the instructor was still in the back seat and if I didn't turn
around and look, I won't know the difference. After three touch and go
landings, I taxied back to the hanger and Burl signed me off for solo practice.
Fact
was I had only a total of five hours and forty-five minutes of dual when I made
my first solo flight.
Oklahoma lay in a shifting wind belt.
For a day the winds would blow hard out of the south, the next day would be
calm and the next day the winds would blow hard out of the north. So it went
and the trick was to try to schedule the airplane on the calm day. If the plane
couldn't be scheduled on a calm day, the next best thing was to fly in the
early morning or in the evening just before the sunset.
The runways at Westheimer Airfield
were almost as wide as some airport runways are long and were three times
longer than most private airports. On a windy day, it wasn't hard to hit that
big runway even in a crosswind.
I
had the Aeronca scheduled to fly solo and had gone to the airport in the late
afternoon as the winds had blown hard all day. It was still real windy when I
arrived. Another instructor and a student had just landed and were trying to
taxi the plane back to the hanger area. The dihedral on the wings of an Aeronca
Champ tend to cause the plane to weathervane. Each time they attempted to turn
ninety degrees to the wind, the Champ would turn back into the wind.
Several
of us were watching as the instructor got out of the plane and held onto the
left wing strut. The student held the left brake and jockeyed the throttle in
an attempt to turn the aircraft towards the parking ramp. A gust of wind,
combined with a little extra throttle, lifted the plane up and stood it on its
left wing tip. The instructor took off running away from the plane.
It
wasn't a laughing matter, but all of us who had gathered to watch, were
splitting our sides. Now the correct thing to do at this point would have been
for the student pilot to kill the mags or at least chop the power. He did
neither as the Aeronca came to rest on its back. The wooden prop managed to
trim a foot off both tips as it splintered itself on the concrete like a buzz
saw just before the engine quit. And as I recall, it had all appeared to take
place in slow motion.
The
student was hanging upside down by his seatbelt as we all took off running the
hundred or so yards to get to the overturned Champ. But, before we got there,
the student released his seat belt falling on his head and knocking himself
starry-eyed. Standing up, the stunned student pilot exited the cockpit by
walking straight down the full length of the wing, punching foot holes in the
fabric as he went. By the time we all got to the plane, we were falling to our
knees laughing.
The
little Champ was easily repaired with the worst damage having been done to the
vertical stabilizer and left wing. I salvaged the chewed up prop and mounted an
old chrome electric clock in the center of the hub and it hung in my shop for
years.
While
the Champ was being repaired, all we had left to fly was the Taylorcraft BC12,
N44061, so Burl checked me out in the Taylorcraft. Its most notable
characteristic was its tendency to float or glide during flare out for a
landing. In other words, best not to come in too hot or the plane would float
halfway down the runway before touchdown.
Landing
the BC12 in a crosswind was also a little tricky because if the plane did
float, it would drift sideways off the runway. This was exactly what happened
on my first dual crosswind landing in the BC12. Burl just sat there and let me
float sideways a couple feet above the runway until I touched down in the
grassy area adjacent to the runway.
It
had rained the night before and the grass area that was normally firm enough to
land on was three inches of mud. When we came to a stop, the Taylorcraft was
stuck. Burl told me to get out and push on the strut as he throttled the plane
out of the mud hole. I jumped out of the aircraft and both my shoes instantly
stuck in the mud.
As I
pushed on the wing-strut in my stocking feet the mud and water being kicked up
by the propeller splattered me. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Burl
sitting in the cockpit smiling. I was sure he was thinking, that was one way to
break that young pilot of drifting sideways in a crosswind landing. Once back
up onto the hard surfaced runway, I went to get my shoes out of the mud.
Suzie,
my bride-to-be, had never flown in an airplane before in her life, let alone a
light plane. Little did she know she would spend the rest of her life flying
with or watching her husband fly off to somewhere? She also had no clue that
most of her livelihood would be provided by something directly or indirectly
related to aviation, but things like that don’t seem to matter much when you’re
young and in love.
I
coaxed her into going up with me in the Taylorcraft. Our flight took us out
over Oklahoma City. Most of my flying until now had been close to the ground
and so I thought I’d see what it was like higher up and climbed to 8,000 feet.
As we descended enroute back to Norman, the heat thermals were already building
and it turned into a pretty bumpy ride.
Suzie
really didn't get a big thrill out of flying that morning. Even though she
later flew many hours with me, I don't think she ever really enjoyed flying
like those who are born to it. She always contended that there were only two
kinds of people in the world, those who loved to fly and those who did not, and
that angel feathers or something of the kind must brush those who do have a
love for flying.
Heading
off to some boring class at OU one beautiful sunny morning, I realized it was
the anniversary of Lindbergh’s flight across the Atlantic. The airfield and an
unscheduled aircraft beckoned me to go flying as I drove past.
Beggs,
a small town south of Tulsa, was the hometown of my grandparents and was only a
hundred or so miles away. What the heck, I thought to myself, I know this part
of the country like the back of my hand. I'll just fly over to Beggs and buzz
my grandma's house. After takeoff, I set a northeast heading and navigated
straight to the little town. The town lay on a hillside, but hills don't show
up very well from the air. However, the water tower read Beggs along with
several senior class year postings. I had hit it on the mark.
Back
in the 1920s and 30s, Beggs, like the name of many small towns, was painted on
the tin roofs of the lumberyard or some other large building. The project
identified the town as an air aid to navigation. The signs were helpful and
appreciated by wayward pilots who were not really lost, but only temporally
confused. The practice was discouraged during WW II fearing that it might aid
enemy pilots in the event of an air attack.
Using
my sectional chart, I was never lost. After buzzing my grandma’s house, I set a
course to Shawnee for my return flight to Norman. It wasn’t long before I
noticed the gas tank gauge, a bent wire attached to a float in the nose cowl
gas tank, was almost touching the top of the fuel cap.
The
tank was full when I left Norman. I had checked it during preflight. The
Taylorcraft was supposed to have a four-hour range. Unfortunately and
unbeknownst to me, the extra fuel for that range was carried in a wing tank and
the wing tank was never filled for local flights in the interest of saving
weight.
There
was no way I was going to make it to the Shawnee airport, let alone back to
Norman, with the fuel remaining. Eastern Oklahoma is thick with blackjack oak
trees, but with an occasional cow pasture. I was faced with a monumental
decision with only ten hours total flying experience. Should I make a forced landing
in an acceptable cow pasture or face running out of gas over some heavily
wooded area?
Circling
to land in a nice size open pasture, I was way too hot on my first approach.
Pulling up, I went around for another try. I was worried a little about my ability
at this point, but what were my choices? Turning into the wind, I came in low
over the treetops and chopped the power as soon as I saw the end of the tree
line pass under the plane. The Taylorcraft settled gently onto the ground
between some grazing cattle and two oil well pump jacks. The pasture was level
and well grazed.
I
killed the engine, set the parking brake and climbed out. I could see an oil
field pump station a ways down the road, so I hiked down there. An elderly
attendant was working at the station and took me into a nearby small town in
his pickup to a Phillips 66 gas station.
Another
major decision, do I buy premium gas or regular gas? Reasoning that premium gas
might be too hard on the engine, I purchased five gallons of regular gas in a
loaner gas can and returned to the Taylorcraft parked in the cow pasture. It
was a hot afternoon with absolutely no wind, so I decided to sit down under a
shade tree and wait for cooler air.
Late
that afternoon, a nice breeze came up directly down the longest stretch of the
cow pasture. When I tested the mags, I could only get about 1900 rpm, not the
normal 2400 rpm. Looking around for something to throw out, I could find
nothing in the Taylorcraft heavy enough to leave behind. I pushed the throttle
forward. The ol' Taylorcraft bounced a couple of times on the pasture and
lifted effortlessly into the air like a magic flying carpet up over the trees
and I was homeward bound.
I
touched down at Max Westheimer as the sun sank low on the western horizon. It
was dark when I arrived home in Midwest City. My mom and my new wife wanted to
know why I was so late getting in and I had to fess up to my Lindbergh's day
adventure.
The
next day, Burl explained to me that I had not been signed off in my logbook for
flights further than a twenty-five mile radius from my home airport. Apparently
there were rules about a dual, then a solo X-country and a triangle course. I
continued to fly the BC12 and the 7AC to build my solo flying time. What the
heck, I had successfully completed my first cross-country flight, but maybe
with a little deficiency in my preflight planning.
This
part of the story I now reluctantly relate. As I turned to make my first
approach to the forced landing in that cow pasture, I felt the presence of
someone or something in the empty cockpit seat beside me. Clearly, with as
little flight experience as I had at the time, I should not have been able to
execute the go around decision and subsequent successful landing. Whether it
was the spirit of my late father helping me fly the plane that day or God had
another plan for me, I’ll not know the answer in this lifetime.
The
next fall and winter, while my wife and I were in Dayton, I wanted to finish
the work on my private pilot’s license. There was a small grass airstrip
airport called Dahio where I went to ask an instructor to sign me off for my
private pilot's license. He was not satisfied with the entries in my logbook
and explained he would have to fly a dual cross-country with me before he would
sign me off.
In
an Aeronca Champ, I flew a triangle course which I laid out down over southern
Ohio and back. Navigating by compass headings alone, I flew the course.
Actually, I was lost the whole time because I was totally unfamiliar with the
countryside. The instructor, in the backseat of the Champ, slept most of the
trip. At any rate, I managed to hit my checkpoints and returned to Dahio
Airport. The instructor signed me off to take my private pilot’s exam and
that’s all I wanted anyway.
The
Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) now known as the Federal Aviation Administration
(FAA) published three rectangle paperback books on private pilot training. The
books were on weather Realm of Flight,
navigation Path of Flight and how
an airplane flies Facts of Flight.
The
books were simple, well written, concise and to the point. Mostly, I committed
them to memory, and to this day could probably layout a navigation
wind-triangle course with protractor, ruler and pencil. There was another book
considered to be the private pilot's bible entitled Civil Air Regulations and Flight Standards for Pilots
printed by Aero Publishers, which was most helpful to new pilots like myself.
The early Civil Air Regulations (CAR)
covered in great detail how a non-radio equipped aircraft would be handled at a
controlled airport. This included various light signals from the tower to the
pilot. Lighting was also used to indicate if the airport was under Instrument
Flight Rules (IFR) conditions or Visual Flight Rules (VFR) conditions. During
IFR, the tower clearance lights and tetrahedron lights would flash. To my
recollection, some of the tower beacon lights would flash white then red if
conditions were IFR or flash white then green if under VFR conditions. However,
I recently combed some old Civil Air Regulations for documentation on this and
found no reference to the procedure.
In
the early days of airline travel, the CAA in cooperation with the airlines,
constructed beacon towers along main routes between major city airports. The
concept was that an airliner could fly from beacon to beacon along an airway
during nighttime or marginal visibility conditions. Nowadays, the interstate
highways are so full of traffic that they are better than the old beacons ever
were at night for navigation.
When
we returned from Ohio, I enrolled at Oklahoma City University. At OU, you were
just another number, but at OCU students received individual guidance. With two
years of generic college behind me, I selected a major in industrial arts,
drafting and design. OCU also had an A&P school. I took advantage of this
by taking elective courses in aircraft maintenance and welding.
I
bought a used Morris Minor for commuting to school. Carl, a classmate of mine
and I were both interested in buying an airplane. Carl owned a BMW motorcycle
and was taking flying lessons at Tulakes Airport. He heard about a Luscombe
that a real estate lady had taken in trade on a house and we went to take a look
at the plane.
Luscombe
N71931 was the slickest little plane I had ever seen. It had been custom
rebuilt from an 8A short fuselage model and the all metal wings and struts from
a later model 8F. The wheel-pants were the oversize streamlined kind. The plane
was painted battleship gray with a yellow lightning strike down the side.
Interior seats were upholstered with rolled and pleated saddle brown leather
and the instrument panel was finished in black Bakelite. The asking price for
the plane was $1,800. Carl had half of the money if I could raise the other
half.
An
instructor at OCU who taught our Tool and Jig Design course had an old Henry J,
two-door sedan. These little plain vanilla cars were named after the ship
building magnate, Henry J. Kaiser, one of the founders of the Kaiser-Frazer
automobile company. Some of the little Henry Js were even marketed mail order
by Sears & Roebuck, but America was not ready for mid-size cars. I struck a
deal with my college instructor to trade him the Morris Minor for his Henry J
and the $900 I needed for my part in the Luscombe and we bought the little
monocoupe.
The
Luscombe
The
Luscombe was stored in a large hanger at Tulakes beside a Cessna 170 with a
colorful guitar painted on the nose of the airplane. In script over the guitar
it read Hank Thompson and indeed it did belong to the country singer. Hank
would travel by Cessna to meet his band for those one-night-stand tours, but he
lived in OKC. When he was in town, he and his band played down at the Trianon
Ballroom, a large dance hall out by the Stockyards where the bootleggers hung
out.
Carl
and I couldn't afford the hanger rent at Tulakes, so we rented a relatively
cheap tie-down spot. Tulakes was home base for the Aero factory where they
designed and built the early twin-engine Aero Commanders. The ol' boy that
started the company had been an admirer of the WW II B-25 or B-26 and wanted to
design a civilian business class aircraft along the same lines, but more
economical to fly.
If
the wind was less than 20 mph, we had to be careful taking off or landing at
the uncontrolled Tulakes airport. The Aero pilots would roll off of their ramp
at the far end of the field and takeoff from that direction, regardless of wind
direction. If landing according to the tetrahedron, a pilot might be looking
down the barrel of an on coming Aero Commander.
Carl was a low-time student pilot and
flew with an instructor in the Luscombe. I just got in it and started flying. I
had never been through a spin in any type airplane, so I asked Carl’s
instructor to take me up and show me how to do a spin. The Luscombe was short
coupled and I quickly found out the plane was not difficult to spin. The plane
would spin by simply slowing it down and kicking the rudder full left or right.
Turning against the engine torque was a little less of violent spin than
turning with the torque.
In a
spin, it always seemed to me as though the airplane was hanging nose down and
not turning, but that the ground was rotating in the windshield of the cockpit.
In later years, I would practice spins in a Cessna Skyhawk just for fun, but
seldom ever took the plane through more than a turn and a half. The ol’ 172s
are so stable that the plane just kind of swings its tail around in a not very
nose down rotation.
The
flaps on the Luscombe, unlike the Paralift flaps on the Cessna, were not very
effective except when used for a little extra lift or slowing the aircraft
down. The best way to make a short field landing in the Luscombe was to cross
control the rudder and aileron with the nose down. This technique is called a
sideslip, but it’s really more of a skid. The plane falls out of the sky like a
rock so just before touchdown you had to be ready to neutralize the controls
and have enough altitude to stop the descent and make a normal flair-out for
landing.
The
first time I tried this in a Cessna with the Paralift flaps extended, the
aircraft went into a violent swinging oscillation. Turns out, that you don't
side slip a Cessna with full flaps. That's one of those things that a pilot
learns the hard way if someone doesn't remember to tell them about it.
South
Shields Airport
There
were only three main airports near Oklahoma City. They were the Downtown
Airpark, the Municipal Airport, later renamed Will Rogers, and Tulakes Airport
so named because it was located between two lakes and later renamed Wiley Post.
All the others were grass strips or private airports. There was, however, the
South Shields Airport on old Highway 77 closer to Moore than OKC. Don’t look
for it on a map because like most convenient airports, it is now a housing
addition.
Carl made a deal with the FBO at the
South Shields Airport for he and I to work alternating weekends servicing
airplanes in exchange for our hanger rent. When the annual inspection came due on
the Luscombe, it did not pass the compression check even though the engine
always ran smoothly. Carl and I did a top overhaul on the little four-cylinder
replacing the rings and grinding the valves. Aircraft partnerships and aero
clubs have scheduling conflicts, but Carl and I never had a problem. He
generally flew during the week and evenings. I had a night job with Hayes
Aircraft at Tinker AFB and flew on weekends.
Most
of our flying was at low altitudes. On Carl's first cross-country, he flew west
towards the Texas Panhandle. Out there the land tends to rise up, called Llano Estacado in Spanish. I recall him
telling about cruising at 1,500 feet as he flew west and watching the ground
come up to meet him. He would climb another 1,000 feet and here would come the
ground again. Carl remarked that he began to think he was soon going to be
taxiing at high speed.
With
about 60 hours of flying time under my belt or should I say, the seat of my
pants, I decided I needed to go ahead and get my private pilot's license. I
scheduled a test with the flight examiner’s office at the Will Rogers Airport.
The written exam consisted of a hundred true or false questions. After passing
the written exam, the flight examiner and I proceeded to the Luscombe parked on
the ramp.
Private
pilot exams, up until a short time before I took my test, had included a spin
entry and recovery. A few months before I took my exam, an examiner was giving
a check ride to an applicant in a Piper J-3 Cub and one of them caught their
shoe in the rudder pedals. Needless to say, the Cub spun all the way into the
ground. Spins were no longer required on the private pilot's flight-test after
that.
At
first the examiner was reluctant to give me the flight exam in the Luscombe
because he didn't think it had a working radio. Seems as though a new bulletin
had come out which stated that pilots needed to demonstrate their ability to
operate communication and navigational radio equipment. The radio in the
Luscombe was a Mark One Narco, affectionately nicknamed the Coffee Grinder
because of the crank knob on the receiver tuner. Finally, after convincing the
examiner that the radio really did work, we proceeded with the flight exam.
The
old Narco radio transmitted on a fixed frequency in the mid-kilocycle range,
supposedly monitored by all control towers. They would then reply on the
megacycle frequency assigned to that tower in order to give a landing
clearance. The problem was finding the megacycle frequency in order to receive
the tower.
Before
whistle stop tuning, the receiver dial was set as close to the tower frequency
as possible, hoping to hear them reply. If the reply was not received, the
tower was asked to give a voice count. A short count was one to five and a long
count was one to ten. After asking the tower for a count, the pilot then
cranked the receiver handle back and forth until the pilot was able to hear the
tower.
The
navigation (NAV) receiver worked the same way except that the identifier was in
Morris code. This necessitated at least being able to read some Mores code. The
Fan Marker navigational beacons that pre-dated Visual Omni Range (VOR) stations
had four legs that emitted a solid tone by overlapping the “A” code dot-dash
and “N” code dash-dot. When between the legs, either an “A” or an “N” code
signal was heard.
After
executing all of the maneuvers requested by the examiner, he decided that he
would have me demonstrate my newfound radio navigation ability. Newly found
because I had never done it before. The examiner had me pull my ball cap down
low on my forehead so that I couldn’t see out the windshield. Believe me, it’s
a real trick trying to keep an aircraft straight and level with nothing more
than an altimeter, turn-and-bank (TAB) and airspeed indicator. The TAB
indicator on the Luscombe was vacuum driven by a venturi mounted on the bottom
of the fuselage between the landing gear.
Tuning
to the OKC radio beacon, I picked up an “A” signal and turned north hoping to
cross a fan marker leg. Looking at the sectional chart in my lap, I noticed
that one of the legs of the marker lay across the Canadian River. Out of the
corner of my eye, I saw the red sandy riverbed go under my left wing and
started a slow turn to what I guessed was the heading to the airport. Just like
clockwork, the solid beacon tone came in and we were on course back to Will
Rogers. After a respectable wheels landing, the examiner invited me up to the
FAA field office in the terminal building and issued me my brand new Private
Pilot's Certificate.
Carl
and I had owned the Luscombe for about two years when we sold it. The new owner
also kept it at South Shields Airport. The large curved roof, metal hanger
there had been built prior to WW II. The following winter, during a heavy
storm, the hanger fell-in from the weight of a heavy ice and snow storm. It
crushed several airplanes including the Luscombe, which was in the middle of
the hangar and damaged the worst. I don't know if it was ever restored to its
original condition.
PART
II. Private Aviation
Attending OCU days and working the
night shift at Hayes Aircraft meant I had to get up early on Saturday mornings,
as it was the only day I could spend the whole day at the airport flying or
working on the Luscombe. On one particular Saturday morning, I walked out of
the house, jumped in the ol' Henry J to head for the airport. I put the car in
reverse and the clutch pedal went all the way to the floor. It hung on the
throttle linkage and the accelerator stuck wide open.
Picture
this. I was going out the driveway and onto the street stuck in reverse gear
with the engine running wide open. Odd things cross your mind at times like
that. If driving down a street in reverse, do I keep to the right of the road,
which was my left or the left of the road, which was my right?
Whatever,
I only had a second to ponder this before I jumped the curb and was headed
straight for a telephone pole backwards. The brakes, which I had already locked
up, were totally ineffective at stopping the car in reverse. At the last
instant, I had the presence of mind to cut off the ignition switch and came to
a stop about a foot from the telephone pole.
That
Henry J made me so mad that when I got out, I slammed the door so hard that I
cracked the driver's side door window. For the next couple of weeks, Carl came
by on his BMW motorcycle and gave me a lift to school. It was during this time
that my wife's younger sister, Nancy, came for a visit. Carl asked her several
times to go flying with him, but she always found an excuse not to go. He did,
however, get her to go for a ride on the back of his BMW one time. For years
after that, whenever Carl's name came up, Nancy would assume a slightly crouched
stance like she was holding onto the handlebars of a motorcycle, make a
“varoom-varoom” sound and then she’d laugh.
I
traded the Henry J for a two-tone red and black ’53 Buick Special convertible.
One night, after I had bought the new car, I dreamed I was rolling down the
runway in the Buick convertible and it lifted off and flew like an airplane.
Maybe I’d been spending too much time at the airport and flying.
The
Hayes Aircraft contract at Tinker Field ended. I was out of college and jobs
were scarce. Carl and I sold the Luscombe and Carl took off to play steel
guitar in a country band. Suzie and I had visited Dallas several times and
thought that we might like to live there.
In
early 1960, we loaded our worldly possessions, including my two-year-old
daughter and her folded-up playpen into the backseat of the Buick and we set
off down Highway 77 for Big D. That evening, as the city lights of Dallas
loomed on the horizon, I said to my young wife, “This is where our future and
fortune lay!” Indeed it was, for we lived in the Mid-Cities area of the DFW
Metroplex the next thirty years of our lives.
The
Hensley Field Aero Club, which I joined, had a Cessna 170 tail-dragger that was
kept at the old Army National Guard airstrip in downtown Grand Prairie. The
airport had been a Navy training and auxiliary landing field during WW II. Like
so many airports, after the war it had been granted to the city of Grand
Prairie and the town had grown up around it.
The
old Grand Prairie airport had no main runway. It was of an early design for
airfields laid out in a large hexagon. The idea being, that the pre-war era
Navy trainers could takeoff or land in any direction. A large portion of the
pavement had weeds growing up through the cracks. The north-south center
section, the prevailing direction of the winds and most used portion of the
strip, was kept relatively weed-free by periodic use.
Required
reading for all would-be flyers was the Ziff-Davis publication Flying magazine. On the cover of an old
issue was the photo of a Twin Beech parked in front of the Flight Deck
restaurant at Southwest Airmotive on Love Field. I had shown it to my wife back
in Oklahoma and we decided someday we were going to fly into Love Field and
have dinner at the Flight Deck.
After
we had lived in the Dallas Metroplex for a time, we planned our evening out at
the Flight Deck. My wife, our three-year-old daughter and myself piled into the
Cessna 170 at Grand Prairie airport around dusk and departed for Southwest
Airmotive at Love Field. My daughter liked to stand between the front seats so
she could see out the window better when we would taxi.
It
was a no moon night and by the time I made my approach to land at Love Field,
the night was pitch-black. I made my usual short field landing on the numbers
like I was accustomed to doing and that left me about a mile to taxi to the
other end of the field. I should have requested to land long, but I didn’t know
to do that back then. The tower instructed me to turn left at the next
intersection and cleared me to Southwest Airmotive.
Bouncing
along down the taxiway, I came upon a stop sign. Wow, I thought, this is really
a fancy airport, has stop signs on the taxiway. I stopped, looked both ways and
proceeded on down the taxiway. It was then that I came upon a catering truck.
The driver waved and I waved back. Then he yelled something out the window to
me. I throttled back and opened my side window. “The taxiway’s about 50 feet
over that way,” the driver hollered pointing, “You’re on an airport perimeter
road!”
And
so there really were not stop signs on big fancy airports after all. Oh well,
we eventually had a nice dinner at the Flight Deck restaurant and returned to
Grand Prairie Airport later that evening. Sammy’s, who actually operated their
own restaurant and the Flight Deck restaurant became two of our favorite places
to eat until both finally closed years later.
The
Aero Club also had a Beech T-34 Mentor that was based at Hensley Field located
just north of Mountain Creek Lake west of Chalk Hill. This T-34 still had the
Korean era dark blue Navy paint job. The Air Navy and Marine Corps Reserves,
Air National Guard and Chance Vought Aircraft shared the airfield.
The
T-34 was my first chance at flying a retractable gear aircraft. The seats in
the T-34 were aluminum buckets and the pilot and passenger had to wear a
parachute or use a seat cushion in order to fly the aircraft. I believe it was
a club rule to wear a parachute, because I always did and it also made the
aircraft legal for aerobatics.
One
of the neat features of the little Beech tandem trainer was that the canopy
could be slid back and the aircraft flown open cockpit. However, the front and
rear canopies could not both be open in flight at the same time. Bobby, a long
time flying buddy of mine, used to like to go flying in the T-34 with me in
rear the seat and we both liked to fly open cockpit, so we would split the open
cockpit flight time.
The
radios in the T-34 were Very High Frequency (VHF) and Navy Dallas tower
operated on Ultra High Frequency (UHF). The tower was supposed to monitor a VHF
frequency, but they generally kept the volume turned down because the other
traffic in the area, like Chance Vought, all used the UHF frequencies. About
half the time, when calling for landing instructions, they wouldn’t reply.
After circling the field to insure that there was no traffic in the pattern, I
learned that the only way to get their attention was to fly down the active
runway about tower height and then they would turn up the volume on their VHF
and respond to your landing request.
The
local Civil Air Patrol (CAP) squadron was also located at the old downtown
Grand Prairie Airport and I volunteered to join. As a rated pilot with
considerable flight experience, I was made a 1st Lt. commission and
quickly promoted to Captain.
The
CAP does a lot of good work with their cadet corps programs, but primarily I
volunteered because of the service that the CAP provides to civil aviation in
search and rescue missions for downed aircraft.
The
CAP squadron kept an 85 hp Aeronca Champion in the Texas ANG hangar with some
O-1 Bird Dogs. The military version of the 7AC was designated the L-16 and
named the Grasshopper. However, most pilots just referred to them as a Champ.
There
was always a strong wind current between the two large hangers that faced each
other. The concrete pad between the two hangers was about 20X20 yards. One
afternoon, by my lone self, I pulled the Champ out of the hanger, faced it into
the wind and took it off in the length of the hanger pad. Because of the wind
current between the two hangers, the Champ lifted off like it had been launched
from an aircraft carrier.
There
really wasn't any danger to the stunt because there was a large open grass area
beyond the hanger pad, but I thought that Champ could do it and it did. In the
two years that I was a member of the CAP squadron, we were only called out a
couple of times to search for a downed aircraft. When flying a search pattern,
even under the best of conditions, it is surprisingly difficult to see a
crashed aircraft. I personally never located one during an actual search.
Our
family physician, Doctor Almand, and I had been in the Navy together. He liked
to hang out at the old Grand Prairie Airport with the rest of us airport bums.
In fact, his office was just across the street. Doc made arrangements to
purchase a P-51 Mustang from Nicaragua. The Nicaraguan government was selling
off the remaining P-51s given them by our military.
The
day the P-51 was to arrive, via ferry pilot, we were all at the airport
waiting. About noon, the Mustang came in low over the field, made a tight turn
to final and landed. The P-51, which had probably been shooting up the civilian
population for the past ten years, still had faded Air Force insignias on the
side and the tail markings identified the plane as the Ohio Air National Guard. No wonder the
rest of the world hates us.
As
the ferry pilot climbed out of the cockpit, we noticed that the radio
compartment behind the pilot's seat was full of wadded up charts. Seems the
pilot couldn’t find any World Aeronautical Charts (WAC) for coming up from
Central America through Mexico. Sectional charts being twice the scale of a WAC
and cruising at close to 400 mph, he was flying through those sectionals so
fast that all he could do was throw the used ones over his shoulder and grab
another one.
Dr.
Almand completely refurbished the Mustang, but was a little leery of the
high-powered aircraft and traded it for an immaculate, bright red Beechcraft
cabin-model C-17 Staggerwing.
A
pilot, who had restored an antique radial engine Fairchild Model-24, showed up
at the annual Grand Prairie Airport fly-in. This aircraft was produced in two
versions, the Ranger, with an inverted in-line engine and the Warner, with a
radial engine. This particular aircraft was the radial version, my favorite of
the two models. The inverted in-line engine always burned an excessive amount
of oil.
The
pilot/owner had a for sale sign in the window of the F24W. This aircraft was a
true classic. It reflected the same workmanship as the custom coachbuilt
automobiles of that era. I would have loved to have bought it, but didn't have
the money at the time. The owner was gracious enough, however, to allow me to
fly it around the patch a couple of times and I became even more impressed with
the old bird. It had safety glass windows, not Plexiglas, and the door windows
cranked down like a car window. They just don't build them like that anymore.
The
Grand Prairie airport was eventually closed to all private aviation traffic and
eventually the 149th Regiment of the Texas Army National Guard
stopped operating fixed-wing aircraft at Grand Prairie and began the transition
to helicopters out of Fort Walters at Mineral Wells.
The
last time I landed at GP, I had flown over from Love Field, parked and was
walking over to Doc’s office to renew my flight physical when some guy ran after
me to tell me the airport was closed. Of course I knew the airport was closed,
but back in those days I’d land anywhere I thought I could get my plane in and
back out of. “Oh, thank you for the information,” I replied politely, “I’ll
remember that in the future,” and went on over to Doc’s office. What was he
going to do, call a cop and have him write me a parking ticket?
The
Texas Soaring Association (TSA), a flying club for gliders, had a grass strip
in southwest Dallas County and I had always wanted to try my hand at flying a
glider. So on a Sunday afternoon when I was out for a ride with my wife and
daughter, we came upon the glider airstrip maybe not altogether by coincidence.
The TSA owned a tandem trainer in which they gave lessons. I parked the girls
near the grass strip where they could watch the gliders takeoff and land.
Squeezing
into the front seat of the tandem trainer and the instructor in behind me, the
canopy was closed and we prepared to be towed aloft by a modified surplus Cessna
L-19. Two guys held up the wing tips of the single-wheeled glider and with a
jerk, we accelerated down the strip in tow. The glider climbed more efficiently
than our tow-plane as it struggled to pull us into the air so we appeared to be
looking down on our benefactor. At about 2,000 feet AGL, the instructor told me
to pull the tow cable release handle and we were on our own. The L-19 did a
wingover and dove for the ground to tow the next waiting glider.
The
most enjoyable part of glider flight was the absence of engine noise. However,
the wind noise was louder than I had anticipated. There was nothing to flying
the glider. I caught on quickly to watching my rate of descent. We chased a
young hawk around a thermal to gain altitude and watched for other soaring
birds so as to move from thermal to thermal. A glider is always descending. The
trick is to descend in a rising current of air going up faster than the glider
is going down.
After
about an hour and a half, we returned to the airstrip for a landing. Coming in
a little hot, the glider wanted to float down the field. The instructor pilot
pulled the spoiler lever extending the spoiler panels out of the wings, which
quickly destroyed the remaining lift over the airfoil.
What
a great flight! I was anxious to tell the girls how much fun it had been, but
they met me frowning and with half-scared looks on their faces. It seems that
one of the single-seated gliders had attempted to stretch his approach glide
just a little too far and out of desperation tried to land crosswind.
The
glider caught the rural single-line telephone wire running parallel to the road
and airstrip. The wire stretched, but never broke and just went about popping
the little blue-glass insulators off of the adjoining four or five poles. The
glider came to a sudden full-stop landing in about 50 feet after slamming to
the ground. It was kind of like a tail hook aircraft carrier landing. The pilot
was badly shaken, but uninjured.
All
of this had taken place within a few dozen yards of my wife and daughter. My
wife extracted a promise from me that this would be my first and last glider
flight. She also added one additional request, no parachuting either. To this
day, I have honored that request with the exception that one or two times while
flying in the Navy, I thought I might have to break the parachute part of the
promise.
The
new Arlington Municipal Airport opened with much ceremony and the new
fixed-base operator was an authorized Mooney aircraft distributor. The Mooney
Master was a fixed-gear version of the sleek retractable-gear Mooney Mark 21
low-wing aircraft. One of the sales features of the Master was that it could be
upgraded to a retractable at a later date. The early versions of the
retractable Mooney used a torsion bar lever to extend the landing gear, but
you’d better get a good grip and swing on the lever or the gear wouldn't lock.
I recall the lever up was gear down and lever down was gear up, which led to
some confusion. Mooney later went to an electrically operated gear like most
other modern retractable-gear light aircraft.
The
Mooney dealer's salesman, who checked me out in the standard Mooney,
demonstrated its structural integrity by diving the aircraft at 300 mph. To my
amazement, the aircraft held together. Needless to say, I was a little
uncomfortable during the dive and I wondered if that was part of the standard
demo. The rental rates on the Mooney were reasonable and they were based on tachometer
time rather than on an hour meter, so I planned to take my next cross-country
trip using the Mooney.
My
wife and daughter had taken the train to Ohio to visit her folks and I was
flying up to get them. Departing shortly after noon in the Mooney, I headed
east on a beautiful sunshiny day. After passing Indianapolis, I began to
encounter a layer of broken overcast clouds. Cruising at 6,000 feet VFR on top,
the sucker holes were starting to get smaller. You are a sucker to believe you
can climb out or descend through those small breaks in the clouds. It was time
to descend below the cloud layer in order to complete the rest of my flight to
Dayton VFR.
With
several hundred hours of flying experience, I still did not have my instrument
rating. Also, I was accustomed to flying aircraft more in the 140 mph range
than I was to flying aircraft that cruised at 200 mph. As the next good size
sucker hole went by under me, I banked the Mooney over, reduced the power and
descended into the opening in the cloud layer.
Needless
to say, I should have reduced the throttle even more and slowed down. The next
thing I knew, I had missed the VFR hole and was in the clouds. Frantically, I
scanned the full gyro panel. Every instrument was spinning, but my
center-of-ass was telling me I was in straight and level flight. I was in the
infamous suicide spiral that has killed so many pilots.
Luckily,
I was still about a thousand feet AGL when I broke out of the bottom of the
cloud layer doing 240 mph in a hard left turn and slightly nose down. I bounced
on towards Cox Municipal Airport in the Mooney under the overcast, but it was
at that very moment in my flying career I decided I would go to work on
obtaining my instrument rating.
The
suicide spiral, as it is sometimes referred to, acts on the pilot's inner ear
affecting his sense of balance. This is a phenomenon that results from
centrifugal force disguising itself as gravity. It is the same effect that
allows a racecar to bank high on a turn or keeps a passenger in the seat of a
roller coaster when it loops. As the aircraft banks, the nose will pitch up or
down depending on the direction of the turn and the pilot enters an
ever-tightening turn while feeling that he is in level flight. Eventually, the
aircraft stalls, drops a wing and rolls over headed nose-down for the ground at
high speed.
The best procedure for descending through a
cloud layer for a non-qualified or low time instrument pilot is to slow the
aircraft down and trim it for level flight, pull the power off slowly to set up
a 200 or 300 feet per minute, rate of descent and without touching the
controls, hands off, allow the aircraft to descend through the cloud layer.
Most inexperienced pilots, myself included, lack the nerve to do this. They try
to drive the airplane down through the clouds as if the plane would not stay
level without the pilot’s grip on the controls. A blind descent works
increasingly better the greater the VFR space between the bottom of the cloud
layer and the ground.
Like
most pilots, I have been anxious from time to time, but I can honestly say I
can never recall being really afraid when flying. That is, at least not until
afterwards when you realize what a dumb trick you’ve just pulled and then it
scares the hell out of you.
To
be a firsthand witness to a mighty thundercloud or view a wondrous sunset from
lofty heights is a rare privilege. They say that sunrises are for copilots, but
don't believe it. Even the old timers still look out the cockpit window from
time to time and gaze in awe at God's creation. No matter how high or how far
we fly, where we land is the place we call home.
In a high performance aircraft like a
jet, this false gravity phenomenon can even make a pilot believe he is going
up, so he pushes forward on the controls and flies into the ground. The only
salvation from this condition is to believe the gyro instruments or fly the
gauges, as they are nicknamed by pilots.
Viet Nam era carrier pilots referred
to the artificial horizon attitude gyros made by Lear as the “Lear Liar”
because it sometimes told the pilot what he didn't want to believe, but the
ones who are still alive believed them. When you are in the clouds on a night
with no moon, out over water or barren landscape, you often can't point to up
with both hands. Believe your instruments no matter what your gut is telling
you.
Charlie
Plumb, a Nam F4 pilot, tells a story of believing your instruments. Seems a jet
pilot was forced to make a night instrument landing on a carrier in bad weather
and missed the first tail-hook cable, the #1 wire in carrier-pilot lingo.
The
pilot applied full power to go around, but had actually caught the last
arresting cable. The cable stretched and his F4 went over the bow of the
carrier, hanging nose down from the cable. Charlie said, “You can understand
the pilot’s confusion. The ol’ Lear Liar was telling him he was going
straight-down at full-power with no airspeed and zero altitude.”
A
ground loop is not a loop at all. It is to an airplane what a spinout is to a
racecar. In other words, the aircraft spins around in a circle on the ground
after the pilot loses forward control and it usually occurs during a landing
rollout. If at a fast enough speed, a ground loop will do a lot of damage to the
aircraft's landing gear or even a wing tip.
Tail-wheel
or conventional landing gear airplanes, often referred to as tail-draggers, are
much more prone to ground loops than tricycle gear airplanes. This is primarily
due to their higher angle of attack during flare-out for landing. A nose-high
attitude is required in order to make a full-stall landing and the wing
momentarily blocks the airflow over the rudder. Many airplanes lack adequate
directional control during this transition from flight to high speed taxiing.
There are only two kinds of pilots. Those
who have ground looped a tail-dragger and those who are going to. I
knew of a DC-3 pilot that first ground-looped a Three after 6,000 hrs of flying
time.
The
radial engine, Cessna 190s and 195s with conventional tail-wheel gear have
always fascinated me. The cockpits of these old aircraft are reminiscent of the
airliners of that era. The front seat of the 190 sits very high and the
visibility over the nose is poor at best, plus the pilot must assume an unusually
high angle-of-attack in order to make a full-stall landing.
The
alternative to a full-stall landing is to make a power on, main-gear landing
known as a wheels landing, which is fine if there is plenty of runway for
rollout. Some of the Cessna 190s had crosswind landing gear. The wheel axles
would pop out of a ball socket to align the main-gear at a slight angle and
helped to prevent ground loops, but not much.
Years
ago, I had an opportunity to fly a 190 out of old Mangrum Field. On my first
landing in the 190, I didn’t get the tail wheel down soon enough and started
losing directional control. The airline pilot, in the right seat and who also
owned the plane, tapped one of the brakes snapping the 190 back straight again.
Thus saving my reputation and his airplane.
PART
II. Private Aviation
Up
until the new GI Bill was introduced, I had paid for all my flight training out
of my own pocket. The Veterans Administration (VA) would now pay for ninety
percent of your flight school expenses and I signed up. The commercial pilot
certificate was a mere formality as I had already logged more hours than
required for certification.
Attending
night ground school at Goble Aviation, I quickly passed the commercial written exam
and took my check ride in Cessna 150, N5648E. I thought it was kind of a laugh
getting certified as a commercial pilot in a little Cessna 150, but hey, it was
a common practice.
Next
would come my instrument rating. There are new blind flying and landing systems
being developed like R-NAV, Loran and GPS, but for the last 40 plus years, the
primary system has been the Visual Omni Ranges. These VHF radio range stations
tell the pilot what the bearing of the aircraft is from or to the station. A
VORTAC adds Tactical UHF and Distance Measuring Equipment (DME) capability to
the Omni station.
A
Localizer is a fixed radial VOR with a vertical VOR, called a Glide Slope,
which allows the aircraft to descend down a secondary fixed radial to a
touchdown point on the runway. The Outer Marker uses an Automatic Direction
Finder (ADF) to locate a fixed point on the approach. Outer and Inner Markers
send a conical radio beam tone signal straight up, which sets off a Marker
Light on the panel as the aircraft passes over. All of these make up an
Instrument Landing System (ILS).
In
the early days of radio navigation, aviation direction finders were not
automatic. The pilot or navigator had to rotate the handle on the loop antenna
manually until hearing a null tone. Later versions did this automatically and
thus ADF.
Mr.
Goble was an FAA designated flight examiner and operated a flight training
school out of Redbird Airport, south of Dallas. Goble was one of the world’s
original characters. He seldom smiled and even more seldom had anything good to
say about your flying, but personally I liked ol' Goble. He was a good
instructor.
Goble
offered an Instrument Rating (IR) course in his Beech model 35 Bonanza, N191GA.
Notice the G.A. for Goble Aviation. I had used very little of my VA eligibility
obtaining my Commercial pilot’s license, so I took the full forty-hour course
in the Bonanza.
The
Dallas Naval Air Station (NAS) had Link trainers, nicknamed Blue Boxes, to
which I had access. I could have used some flight simulator time for credit on
my Instrument Rating, but I did not because I enjoyed flying the Bonanza. The
old Blue Box was pretty good for practicing navigation and instrument
approaches, but lacked reality in simulating the feel of actual flight.
I
think it may be easier to train a low time pilot to fly instruments than one
who has been flying VFR for several hundred hours. It is also my belief that
airline pilots depend on flight directors and autopilots far too much to be
good at flying light planes with minimum instrument equipment.
After
a dozen or so hours under the hood in that fishtailing Bonanza, I was still
apparently holding a death grip on the flight controls while on instruments.
One afternoon when I arrive for my weekly flight session, Goble had blocked out
three hours of flight time for us in the Bonanza.
Goble
began by explaining, “We are going to break you of putting a crease in the
upholstery of the seat with that part of your body where it is most likely your
brains are located.”
I
told you Goble was a nice guy, you just didn’t believe me! It was a wonder he
didn’t make me taxi out under the hood. I began my takeoff roll under the hood
and never saw outside the aircraft again until I flared out for a landing three
hours later back at Redbird.
I
navigated my way over to Love Field where we played ring-around on the ILS for
a couple of hours. On one approach, while still under the hood, I actually felt
the main gear touch the runway, so I guessed that I had just shot a zero-zero
landing.
Next,
Goble had me navigate to a couple of intersections or fixes. From time to time,
he would take the controls and put me in some unusual attitude and say, “Okay
it’s your aircraft.”
Ol’
Goble was right, I could only pucker so long! After a while I began to relax my
grip on the yoke and sat a little more relaxed in the seat. Most of all I had
gained the confidence that I could fly the plane on instruments.
The
way I prepared for my check-ride in the Bonanza was to sit in the cockpit for
hours with my eyes closed pointing to an instrument or switch as I called each
one out to myself. The standard Airline “T” instrument panel configuration had
been adopted by private aviation with the airspeed, horizon, rate and
Directional Gyro (DG) instruments forming a "T" in the center of the
panel.
The
best way to describe instrument flying without an autopilot is like having four
pots of water on the stove ready to boil and then to keep adjusting the flame
on each pot so as to just barely keep them from boiling over.
After
obtaining my instrument rating, I was flying a Cessna Cardinal down to
Brownwood, Texas and the weather was VFR on top with a solid cloud layer below.
Brownwood was reporting 1,000 feet overcast with good visibility.
Flying
VFR on top always reminded me of being suspended over a giant cotton blanket.
There is no sensation of speed high above a cloud layer, but just before
entering the clouds, one gets a sudden sense of speed before descending into
the clouds.
It
was time to try out my newfound instrument approach skills alone and under
actual conditions. Brownwood only had a VOR approach and so I radioed for
instrument clearance from VFR on top. Cleared for the approach, I lined up on
the Brownwood VOR and began my descent. Just like magic, I broke out of the
clouds, looking straight down the runway. Gosh, I remember thinking to myself
this stuff really does work.
GUMP
The early model Bonanzas had a smooth
row of machined aluminum toggle switches along the bottom center of the instrument
panel. These switches operated lights, landing gear, et cetera. More than one
pilot had placed the electric flap switch in the down position thinking that he
had extended the landing gear. Beech recognized this human factors engineering
error and in later model Bonanzas put a small wheel on the landing gear switch
and a flat bar on the flap switch so they could be distinguished by touch
alone.
In
all my years of flying, I never failed to remember to extend the gear. I
believe mainly because I always used the old Navy acronym GUMP spoken as, “Gas,
Undercarriage, Mixture and Props.” I say the words out loud before turning to
final for a landing and still do this when flying a local Bonanza N346S to this
very day. There is an axiom about landing gear up, which is exactly the same as
the one about ground loops, there are those
who have landed gear up and there are those who are going to.
Late
one afternoon, I was sitting on the steps in the doorway of the gas shack at
the new Grand Prairie Municipal Airport watching several airplanes practicing
touch and go landings in the pattern. The Unicom radio was blaring away as each
aircraft dutifully announced their position in the pattern.
For
about a half hour, a local Comanche pilot had been in the pattern with a couple
of other light planes. As the Comanche turned final for the sixth or seventh
time, I noticed his landing gear had still not been extended. Running to grab
the mike on the Unicom just inside the door I shouted, “Comanche landing at
Grand Prairie, your gear is not down!”
The
Comanche made a perfect flair out for landing and skidded down the runway on
its belly. Several of us ran out to the plane as the pilot and one passenger
exited. “Why didn't you go around?” I asked, “I was yelling at you on the
Unicom that your wheels were not down.”
Looking
at me with a blank stare, the pilot explained, “I had just turned the volume on
my radio down because this was going to be my final landing to a full stop and
the radio had been annoying me.”
A
half dozen of us lifted the plane up off of the runway as someone reached
through the storm window on the pilot's side, placed the gear switch in the
down position and the landing gear lowered. The aircraft actually suffered very
little damage. The worst damage was to the belly where an antenna had been
mounted and, of course, the prop was curled on the tips.
Goble
had the use of a really nice Beech Baron N9543Y approved for multi-engine
training for VA flight training. Now we were getting somewhere. With twin 265
hp engines, it finally felt like I was flying something. The hardest concept
for a single-engine pilot making the transition to a twin is to understand that
a twin doesn't always fly on one engine.
Airspeed
indicators on twins have an additional mark on them. The blue line indicates
the aircraft’s Velocity Minimum Controllable (VMC) airspeed. Once a twin is
slowed below this speed, directional control can no longer be maintained on one
engine. Some twins are more forgiving than others if VMC is violated. Other
factors like density altitude, how heavily loaded and pilot skills will also
have an effect.
Standard
procedure for practicing engine failure in a twin is for the student to
identify the engine that the instructor has reduced power on and for the
student to point to the corresponding prop lever. The instructor will then add
back enough power to simulate the prop having been feathered.
To
feather the prop means to use the propeller pitch lever to turn the blade
edgewise in the air stream and thereby reduce aerodynamic drag. The easiest way
to identify which engine is out is to remember this simple rule, “You are
standing on your good engine.” In other words, the pilot is applying rudder
pressure on the good engine side of the airplane in order to keep the plane
headed straight.
On
my multi-engine flight-test with thirty degrees of landing flaps and gear
extended, I was about to touchdown when Goble told me to execute a go-around. I
applied full power, the props were already full forward and I placed the gear
handle in the up position. When I was almost out of runway with the gear coming
up, Goble pulled the right engine on me. I identified the engine that was out
by pointing to the correct prop lever.
As I
transitioned to a positive rate of climb, I had forgotten to retract the flaps.
Mostly, I was intent on staying above blue line. I was holding the Baron
straight, but due to a bad left crosswind that I was unable to correct for, we
passed over one of the hangars clearing it by only about a hundred or so feet.
A really good pilot might have milked off ten degrees of flap and maybe picked
up some airspeed. Then again, maybe the Baron would have settled a little and
not cleared the hangar.
Goble
had more guts with a student than I would ever have, letting me fly that Baron
out just a hair above VMC with a bad crosswind. After we were on the ground,
Goble grumbled a bit about if we had been at full fuel and full passenger load,
I might not have been able to fly that Baron out like I did, but he did allow
that I had managed to carefully maintain VMC and because of this he would go
ahead and sign me off for a Multi Engine Land (MEL) airplane rating. That was
probably the closest thing to a compliment I ever got out of the man.
A
twin-engine aircraft with an engine out will roll over on its back in an
instant if you continue to maintain full power on the good engine below VMC. In
order to prevent this, the power on the good engine must be retarded and the
nose lowered enough to obtain an indicated airspeed at or above the VMC speed.
Pulling
the power off on a good engine goes against a pilot's instinct, but a pilot has
a snowball’s prayer in hell of climbing out in a twin below VMC at high
altitudes. With an engine out and below VMC in a twin you are a single-engine
airplane with a controlled rate of descent. Pick a place to set her down or
you’ll drop a wing and you can kiss your ass goodbye. It's kind of like the old
joke about a forced landing at night. Just before touching down, turn on the
landing lights. If you don't like what you see turn them back off again.
P-factor,
sometimes referred to as prop-cavitation, is not altogether distinguishable
from engine torque, but it is mostly the P-factor that causes loss of
centerline thrust.
There
is a phenomenon similar to the engine out VMC on a twin that occurs in
high-powered single-engine aircraft like the P-51 and to a lesser extent in any
aircraft over 250 hp. A high-powered single-engine plane will lose directional
control at slow air speeds in a high angle of attack.
Single-engine
VMC occurs in a nose-high attitude when the prop blade on one side of the
aircraft is taking an excessive bite of air and the opposite side is running in
a cavity. Prop Cavitation combined with engine-torque will result in
single-engine VMC and a high-powered single plane will crank over on its back
the same as a twin.
Brown's
Flying Service in Winter Haven, Florida, offered and I guess still does, a
crash course for adding a seaplane rating to your existing FAA ticket. While
visiting in Winter Haven, I located Brown and his Piper J-5 Cub floatplane
docked on one of the Chain of Lakes behind the Winter Haven Airport.
Over
the next several days, I learned to taxi on water and how to stir up a wake on
a calm surface in order to circle back on it and bounce the floatplane into the
air. When there is no airport, runway or windsock, a seaplane pilot soon learns
to pay attention to smoke and ripples on the water in order to determine wind
direction for setting down. Notice I avoided using the term landing.
A seaplane's float or hull creates a
tremendous amount of suction in the water and it takes a lot longer distance to
takeoff than it does to stop on the water. The first time I flew with Brown, he
suggested we land on the small lake in downtown Winter Haven and walk over to
McDonald's for lunch. He headed straight for the beach and touched down a dozen
or so yards from the shore. Sitting in the front seat, I was convinced we were
going to end up in the McDonald's parking lot, but as soon as the floats hit
the water, we came to an abrupt stop. In fact, we had to add a little power to
taxi to shore and beach the plane.
Over the course of the next few weeks
of flying dual in the floatplane, we explored some of the more backwater lakes,
taxied past alligators sunning themselves on logs and practiced various water
takeoff and landing techniques. My final flight in the seaplane was with an FAA
designee examiner who signed me off for my Single-Engine Sea (SES) rating, an
addition to my standard Single-Engine Land (SEL) and Multi-Engine Land (MEL)
rating.
Next
to the Brown’s Seaplane Service dock was the winter home of the author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Richard Bach.
He kept a floatplane there for a while, but I don’t know if he even owns the
place anymore. I recently re-visited the Brown’s operation and it was still
going strong. They have several more planes, a full seaplane service shop and
his daughter now ramrods the flight training schedule.
Up
the road north and across I4 is the Fantasy of Flight air museum where I got my
first ride in an old D-25 bi-plane. I mention the museum here in the context of
seaplanes because there is a four-engine Short Sunderland MK5 flying boat on
display there. When I first entered the museum hangar, I mistook it for a Pan
Am Flying Clipper and gasped, well I was a little disappointed. The Short
flying boats were to the British Empire what the Sikorsky S-42, Martin M-130
and Boeing 314 Flying Clippers were to America for trans-oceanic flight.
In
the early days of American Airlines, pilot training had been conducted under
contract to the American Flyers flying school at Fort Worth’s Meacham Field. An
elderly pilot by the name of Boardman took over the old hangar facility and
operated a VA approved flight school. His former wife was also a flight
instructor at Shiloh Airpark and I believe was the oldest living, currently
licensed lady pilot at the time.
I
was currently flying copilot on DC-3 N37F and ready to go for my Type rating.
The aircraft Type rating flight-test check ride for an aircraft over 12,000 lbs
is the same flight-test check-ride as the Airline Transport Pilot (ATP) rating.
So if taking and passing the ATP written exam first, both ratings could be
obtained with the one check ride at the same time.
Boardman’s
Flying School was one of the few approved for a DC-3 ATP rating. I still had
some VA training funds left in my account, so I signed up to take the ATP
rating course. A really sharp young pilot instructor by the name of Jim Self
was my instructor for the course. Jim was a short, stocky and pleasant sort of
a fellow who rode a motorcycle to work.
When
we were out boring holes in the sky for practice in the DC-3, one of our
favorite tricks was to head out to the chain of lakes north of Carswell Air
Force Base and drop down to about 500 feet over the water. Flying low, at 120
mph close to the shoreline, we could fly-by the topless sunbathers before they heard
the noise of our twin Pratt & Whitney engines coming at them. The startled
young ladies would often sit straight up to see what was flying over. Dirty
trick, but somebody had to do these things to uphold us pilots’ reputations.
After
logging about ten hours in Boardman's DC-3 N144D, I was ready to take my check
ride and went to the FAA to have my logbook certified to take the ATP written
exam.
There
was about enough left in my VA flight training account for one more DC-3
flight, so I scheduled an hour of dual. Jim told me to go out and preflight the
DC-3. Now keep in mind I had been flying DC-3 N37F, a commercial model.
Boardman’s DC-3 N144D was a converted C-47 and I had gotten used to doing the
preflight on N37F. They were similar in almost all respects except for one
minor, but very important difference. Boardman’s DC-3 had an external rudder
lock and N37F had a rudder-peddle locking bar in the cockpit.
When
Jim came aboard the DC-3, I was going through the preflight checklist. After
cranking the engines, I taxied out to the end of the active runway by jockeying
the throttles, an easy way to turn when taxiing a large twin-engine aircraft
and better than riding the brakes. Cleared for takeoff at the end of the
runway, I pushed the throttles forward. The DC-3’s tail came up and I was
rolling down the runway on the main gear.
As I
was getting close to lift off speed, a left crosswind kept pushing me to the
right of the runway. Jim asked in a loud voice, “Why aren’t you correcting for
the crosswind, Arnold?”
“I’m
standing on the left rudder already and nothing’s happening!” I replied.
Jim
placed his feet on the rudder pedals and exclaimed, "I know what it
is!" He grabbed the throttles and pulled them both full off. "I got
it," he yelled and I let go of everything. Helplessly, I watched as Jim
rode the brakes, hauling the control wheel back into his lap as we went onto
the south runway overrun finally coming to a stop in a cloud of dust.
Swinging
the DC-3's airstair door away from the tower’s view with the throttles, Jim
told me to hold the brakes as he ran to the rear of the plane and went out the
door. The tower called and asked if we were having a problem. I replied,
“Four-four Delta, standby please,” because at this point, I didn’t know what
the hell had happened.
Jim climbed back onboard holding the external
rudder lock in his hand, a V-shaped piece of aluminum that had been slid into
the rudder slot and held in place by a bungee cord to keep the rudder from
swinging in the wind when parked. When I realized what I had done, leaving the
rudder lock on, I broke out in a cold sweat and we both sat there looking at
each other.
The
reason Jim had turned the tail of the Three away from the tower was because he
didn't want the tower to see him remove the rudder lock and have to file an
incident report. Besides, there was no aircraft damage.
The
tower called again asking if we needed assistance. Jim answered them saying,
“No, we were practicing an aborted takeoff and got up a little more speed than
we intended. Permission to taxi back up the active?” and the permission was
granted.
We
stood under the shade of the DC-3 wing drinking a coke. Jim confided in me that
during the last few weeks, he had been thinking about quitting flight
instruction. A few days before, a student in a Cessna 150 had stalled the plane
on final approach and he had barely recovered in time. He just had a feeling
his number was coming up and maybe he should move on.
I
assured him that if his time were up, it sure as heck would have been today.
Jim laughed in agreement and said, "Guess we better go ahead and fly
because if we don't, we'll be too scared to come back and fly another
day."
“Kind
of like getting back on the horse that throwed you?” I said, smiling, and Jim
shock his head yes. We climbed back aboard the Three and Jim radioed the tower
for permission to taxi. I made a normal takeoff this time and headed out toward
Eagle Mountain Lake and we cruised around the shoreline for a while before
heading back to Meacham Field.
Since
then, I have asked several airline pilots, like Jerry who flew the old Gooney
Birds back in the mainline days, if they ever knew of a successful return to
landing of a DC-3 with the rudder lock on. The question I asked was “If I had
lifted off, could I have used the ailerons and differential power to bring the
Three back and land?”
Most
of the pilots knew of none, but Jerry told me about a DC-3 that had attempted
it. The plane spun all the way into the ground killing all on board.
A
couple of weeks after the DC-3 incident, I received a phone call from a mutual
friend telling me that Jim had been killed, but not in an airplane! Jim had
stopped his motorcycle on the side of the road to visit with some friends. A
passing motorist, an old man, struck Jim and his motorcycle, throwing Jim into
the air and fatally injuring him. He had his helmet on, but had loosened the
chinstrap buckle when he had stopped.
Some
of the other pilots and myself chipped in to help Jim's wife and daughter, but
of course it wasn't enough. It never is. Here was a man who, in essence, had
saved my life in an airplane only days before and he had just died as the
result of a careless automobile driver. Go figure. I guess it was just his time
and not mine.
After
Jim was killed, I logged a hundred or so more hours in DC-3 N37F and became
certified as a twin-engine air taxi pilot in Cessna twins, but I never returned
to finish the ATP and DC-3 Type ratings. A DC-3 is a two pilot certified
airplane, but only one pilot onboard is required to be rated, so what’s the
difference. I just flew with a type rated pilot, even though I did the flying,
whenever I wanted to use the DC-3. Thus ended my pursuit of ratings.
PART
II. Private Aviation
The
two most popular wing designs are the Clark-Y and the Laminar. The latter being
mostly used on higher speed prop planes. However, the Laminar is susceptible to
a phenomenon known as an airflow trap. Due to the uniform symmetry of the
wing’s design, even with adequate airspeed, at certain angles of attack the
airflow over the top of the wing is approximately equal to the airflow under
the wing. With little or no lift, the plane will not climb until the angle of
attack is changed.
An
advantage to a Laminar wing is that you can point the nose slightly down and
pick up speed. This is known as getting a plane on the step. Also, enroute you
can begin a slight rate of descent a hundred miles out and increase the cruise
speed with very little loss of altitude.
An
aircraft dealer at Meacham Field asked me to fly a Mooney Mark 21 down to
Hillsboro for a prospective buyer. Two low-time pilots, who had been hanging
around the airport, asked if they could ride along. The fuel tanks were about
half empty, but there was more than enough gas to make the short hop.
It
was a hot summer afternoon as we touched down with the Mooney on the short
grass strip. The gas boy at the FBO asked me if I needed gas. I always tried to
give the local FBO a little business and told him to fill the tanks. After the
prospective buyer looked over the Mooney, he wasn’t interested. My two large
passengers and I boarded the plane for the return flight.
An
addendum to Murphy's Law might be that it is not always a good idea to have
full tanks and be close to gross weight for takeoff on a short dirt strip on a
hot summer afternoon.
With
throttle, mixture and prop to the wall, the Mooney lifted about two feet into
the air, but refused to climb and the barbwire fence at the end of the strip
was coming up fast.
The
thoughts racing through my mind were should I just pull the gear up and hope
for the best or pull the power off and set back down taking out the barbwire
fence. Then I wondered if the aircraft had any hull damage insurance coverage.
Funny how fast the mind can run through things at times like that.
What
really didn’t cross my mind, but was pure instinct was recalling how Burl had
pushed forward on the stick instead of continuing to pull back when I was
trying to clear the power lines at the OKC Downtown Airpark. So an instant
before arriving at the fence, I did exactly that. I pushed slightly forward on
the controls and the Mooney literally leaped 30 feet into the air. By changing
the attitude, I had caused the coefficient of lift over the top of the wing to
break the Laminar flow trap.
A
business associate of mine, JD, was a large fellow about six foot four. He had
been asking me a lot of questions about flying. He was thinking about learning to
fly and asked me if I’d take him up and show him what it was like to fly in a
light plane. I rented a Mooney from the dealer over at Meacham Field and I flew
JD around over the Mid-Cities area. The Mooney, however, was not a good choice.
JD complained about being really cramped, but he loved the flying.
JD
went to the Cessna dealer and signed up for flight training. Needless to say,
he could barely get in a Cessna 150, so he just bought a used Cessna 310 twin
from the dealer. JD was the only guy I’ve known who soloed in a twin. He got
his private pilot's license and multi-engine rating on the same check-ride.
JD
used the twin to travel on business quite a bit, but had not yet completed his
instrument rating. The weather was going to be marginal for his flight to
Waterloo, Iowa the following morning and he asked me to ride along with him in
the 310.
Always
game for an opportunity to log multi-engine time, I agreed and we left early
the next morning before sunup. It was an odd weather day with two cloud layers,
one at about 6,000 feet and another at about 14,000 feet. Departure control
advised us that pilots were reporting flocks of geese as high as 15,000 feet
and that we should be on the lookout for them.
Flying
northeast, just before the sun came up, we passed over a good size lighted
city. Air traffic control reported a formation of Air Force jets refueling in
our twelve o'clock position at a much higher altitude. Never before and never
again have I seen such a visual anomaly. The city lights were moving under us
with the lower scud layer between us and the ground. We were flying below the
upper broken cloud layer and the jets, with their formation lights on, were
passing overhead above that cloud layer. All of this and the dull rays of first
light are impossible to describe in words what the feeling of being suspended
in all that motion felt like.
With
JD’s business in Waterloo completed, we were ready to embark on our return
flight to Fort Worth. We did the preflight in a strong bitter cold northwest
wind. From the right seat, I closed and latched the door. Unbeknownst to me, I
had shut the door on the coattail of my London Fog raincoat.
In a
climb attitude, the airflow over the wing is different than in level flight,
but when we leveled off for cruise flight, this loud thumping noise began. What
was that? Suddenly, I realized that it was my coattail flapping against the
outside of the fuselage.
Now,
I already knew that it is nearly impossible to shut the door of most aircraft
in flight once opened, but we decided to try anyway. As JD slowed the aircraft
to slow flight, I popped the door into the trail position and pulled my
coattail in. Forget it. Two men and a mule couldn't have shut that door. I held
the door while we circled back to land. I shut the door as we touched down and
we kept rolling for a takeoff.
A
winter storm, which we had anticipated crossing on the way home, had suddenly
become a blizzard. Enroute, we turned east in an effort to outrun the storm.
Listening to air traffic control, we heard a DC-3 report they were trying to
climb out of the storm and were still icing at 15,000 feet. Forget that. So we
continued to move southeasterly, paralleling the front. Approaching Kentucky,
we were running low on fuel and it was going to be necessary to at least make a
gas stop.
The
snowstorm overtook us as we approached the Paducah Airport. The odd thing about
snow is that as you turn into the wind everything becomes a whiteout, but as
you turn with the wind, you can see downward in the direction the snow is
blowing and see the ground just like it was VFR. Therefore, on the downwind and
base legs we could keep the airport in sight, but the short turn to final left
us no choice but to chop the power and wait for the wheels to touch. We could
see out the side windows, but could not see anything forward.
We
taxied to the flight service station building, tied the Cessna 310 down and ran
for the shelter of the station. One lone FAA flight service station operator
was there by himself, still talking to idiots like us who had gotten overrun by
the blizzard. The snow outside was getting deeper by the minute and the local
motel would not even send its courtesy van to the airport to pick us up.
I
have often bragged that I lived so long flying because of my back trouble, that
big yellow streak that runs down the center. Many a pilot has flown into the
big trashcan in the sky because of get-home-itis. JD was upset because he had
this thing about not leaving his wife alone at night. I always preferred to
live to fly another day and so we stayed over.
That
night, I slept on the couch in the flight service station and I’m not sure
where JD finally fell asleep. I was just thankful for a warm place to stay.
The
fast-moving storm passed over that night and it was a bright, sunshiny morning
as we lifted off and headed back to Texas. Even though the storm had moved out
of the Midwest, it had not yet cleared Dallas-Fort Worth and at 200 plus mph,
we were overtaking the storm. We stopped again at a small airport in northern
Arkansas to take on additional fuel.
The
gas boy wasn’t accustomed to seeing twin-engine planes at the small airport and
he inquired of JD as to how much an airplane like his cost. JD gave him an
approximate price for the airplane and explained that many twins cost a lot
more.
The
gas boy said, "Wow, with that kind of money, I could buy half of
Arkansas."
JD,
who was tired and not very happy about being stuck in northern Arkansas at the
time, replied, "Oh yeah, what would you do with the rest of the
money?" but I don’t think the boy exactly got the drift of JD’s sarcasm.
Airborne
on our next leg, we made it to Ardmore, Oklahoma before overtaking the storm
again. Meacham Field was reporting zero-zero conditions at the time, so we
landed and parked the plane at the newly reorganized American Flyers flight
school training facility there. With nothing else to do, we paid them a social
visit. This was one of those old flight schools in the tradition of the early
airline days.
The
chief instructor wore an airline captain's uniform and ran the flight school
like a college. The school could trace its beginnings to the days when they
trained commercial airline pilots. The Captain was a gracious host and showed
us around. It was about this time that I began thinking about the possibility
of starting my own flight school and air taxi business.
That
afternoon, the weather cleared and we returned to Meacham Field in Fort Worth.
Thus, we concluded the return flight from Waterloo without meeting our own
Waterloo.
Ol’
Pete Falco, another business associate of mine, was a part-time real estate
developer and a small time promoter. His sidekick, Gene, was a deputy sheriff.
They were always roping me into flying them somewhere. Pete had one glass eye, but
he loved to fly. He got his student pilot ticket and actually soloed in an
Aeronca Aircoupe.
When
Pete flew with me, he delighted in pointing out unimportant things. During one
of our flights in a Bonanza up to Oklahoma, Pete was looking out the window and
asked, "Isn't that a tornado over there?"
Without looking up I said, “I’m sure
it is.” Several minutes later, I actually looked in that direction. “Oh crap!”
There it was, hanging out the bottom of a small Oklahoma thunderstorm about 20
miles away. I promptly changed course and gave the squall line a wide breadth.
Pete and Gene were working on this
big land deal up at Medicine Park and they wanted me to fly them up to Lawton
for a meeting with the landowner’s attorney. Generally, we used the Bonanza, but
for this trip, only a Cessna Skylane was available.
After
the meeting, Pete wanted to have a look at the land from the air, so I flew
them out over the area. The development lay in a valley near Mt. Scott and not
too far from the Fort Sill Army Post. After circling low in the valley to view
the wooded property, I began a climb out toward the mountain range that lay
between our position and the most direct path of flight back to the Lawton
airport.
There
was a small lenticular cloud over Mt. Scott and that should have tipped me off
to the down draft ahead. When we hit the down draft, the rate of descent
indicator pegged out in the down position. I added full power and went to best
rate of climb speed, but we were going down in a full climb. At the last minute,
I turned, nearly doing a wingover back into the valley in order to keep from
flying into the side of the mountain.
Flying
down the valley, I circled the small mountain range and took up a heading back
to Lawton. Pete was looking out the window and asked, “Are those artillery
shell holes down there on the ground?”
“Yes,”
I replied, “I suppose they are. We are out over the Fort Sill artillery and
rocket firing range, a restricted area, but right now I'd rather take my
chances with an artillery shell than that mountain in these wind conditions.”
A
pilot instructor named Clark operated the small airport at Mangrum Field, north
of Richland Hills in Fort Worth. At one end of the airport was an electrical
high line. Landing from that direction generally required full flaps. This
airport's location was the personification of the old adage, “If you need to
find a private airport, look for some power lines because there is probably an
airport just the other side.”
Clark
gave multi-engine instruction in an old Piper Apache that had a single-engine
service ceiling of about two feet above sea level. Clark referred to his ol’
Apache as the double-breasted humming Piper.
Clark
also had a Citabra for aerobatic training and it got a real workout with students
flying the plane. Clark showed me the J-bolt his A&E mechanic had taken out
of the wing strut during the plane’s last inspection. The bolt was nearly
sheared in half. Pilots refer to these single strut bolts on high-wing
airplanes as the J-bolt because if it snaps, the next thing you will be doing
is explaining to Jesus what had happened. During aerobatic training, student
and instructor always wear a parachute, which is good if you have time to use
them.
On
my own, I had already figured out how to slow roll a Cessna Skylane. It's
really pretty simple. All that is required is to crank in full aileron and not
chicken out by letting up on the ailerons until the horizon has turned full
around in the front windshield. Letting up on the aileron halfway through, will
cause the airplane to perform a split-S and come out the bottom at speeds close
to Velocity Never Exceed (VNE). Not a good idea. Most aircraft will exceed VNE
a little and for a short time, but it is still a dangerous thing to let happen.
I
had access to a Cessna Aerobat, the factory version of an aerobatic Cessna 150
and I took several aerobatic lessons from Clark who had a reputation of being a
darn good instructor. What I hadn't yet tried without an aerobatics airplane
was a loop. The first time I tried it with Clark, I fell out of the top and
lost all orientation. He just sat there and let me recover on my own, but we
were pretty high up.
There
was an older fellow who hung around Mangrum Airport a lot. He performed
aerobatics in a Taylorcraft BC-12 at air shows around the Dallas and Fort Worth
area and his specialty was to slow roll the Taylorcraft at 50 feet off the
deck. He had also written an instruction book on aerobatics.
One
day, we both happened to be at the airport at the same time and I asked him if
he would give me a lesson in the Cessna Aerobat. He was interested in trying
out the Aerobat and so he agreed. The first time he tried a combination loop
and snap roll he lost 1,000 feet of altitude.
What
if we had been at 50 feet? With all due respect, he was unfamiliar with the
plane, but I decided not to take any more lessons from him as I could fly about
as good as he could and I wasn't about to try it down on the deck.
Pilots
often refer to the south central part of the U.S. as thunderstorm alley. On any
given afternoon, thunderstorms will build rapidly in the heat, fed by moisture
from the Gulf. Light planes were never meant to penetrate thunderstorms and
generally can’t climb over them.
A
technique used by experienced light plane pilots is to fly up to the front of
the oncoming storm and land before the high winds arrive. Then via a hangar or
a good tie-down, wait for the squall line to pass. Then fly out the backside of
the storm. Unless the front goes stationary, this generally only takes a couple
of hours.
Starting
in the late 1960s, we took our vacations in the winters to central Florida. On
our first flying trip to Florida, we went in an almost new, but slow Cessna
Cardinal 177. The trip down was uneventful and enjoyable. However, on our
return trip, we ran smack dab into one of those mid-afternoon thunderstorms.
For
a half hour or more, I tried to climb over a low section of the storm. My
daughter, sitting in the right seat holding a sectional chart in her lap, seemed
to be getting a little scared so I decided to give up on the climb at 10,000
feet and started a slow spiraling descent to land somewhere.
That
Cardinal wouldn't climb its way out of a wet paper bag. The plane needed at
least a 180 hp engine instead of a 150 hp engine. Also, why a stabulator on a
Cardinal, flying elevators were engineered for speeds of 400 mph or better.
We
came in over the small town of Lumberton, Alabama, located the airport, landed
and parked the Cardinal. There was no one at the airport, so the three of us
took a nap in the plane while we waited for the rainstorm to pass.
About
dark, we made it to east Texas. After fighting the weather and a long hard day
of flying, I gave up and landed at Marshall, Texas where we spent the night in
a motel.
The
moral of this story is when attempting to cover that many miles in a day get a
higher performance airplane. As the old saying about general aviation goes,
"If you have time to spare, go by air."
On
Christmas Eve of 1969, some friends of ours came over to our house to visit for
the evening. We had met when we bought homes in a new housing development in
Grand Prairie years ago. We were sitting around reminiscing about times past.
Bobby had been a heavy equipment operator, but was now a flight line mechanic
at LTV. He had been with me the day I nearly ground looped the Cessna 190 and
used to fly the T-34 with me.
Bobby’s
appearance and mannerisms were that of the large stoic ex-marine EN he was, but
he was a gentle man by nature. His silhouette in a darkened barroom was
somewhat imposing. In my younger more stupid years, I had a bad habit of
mouthing off to the wrong kind of folks. When we used to frequent the bars out
on the county line and some drunk cowboy would give me a bad time, Bobby would
walk up behind me and stand there until my irritated adversary displayed the
better part of wisdom and moved on.
Judy
was a small lady who resembled the actress Natalie Wood. She spent most of her
younger life having and raising kids. Judy always gave me a hard time. She took
any opportunity to point out to my wife how I would spend any extra money I had
to go log another hour of flying time, usually taking Bobby along with me.
She’d add, what the two of them didn’t spend flying, they’d finish off out at
the county line. Only problem was, Judy kind of had the last part of that
backwards.
Fort
Worth had begun a tradition of outlining their downtown buildings with lights
during the Christmas season. I had the business and personal use of a Piper
Aztec for a while and we all decided that we’d like to go see the Christmas
lights from the air. Suzie, Bobby, Judy and all our kids piled into the
six-place Aztec with me.
With
the kids in the far back and Judy’s youngest in her lap, we took off from
Garland airport. It was one of those crisp cool still-as-a-feather, no moon
evenings. I circled out around Fort Worth and back over downtown Dallas
cruising at about 1,500 feet AGL. With the Aztec throttled way back and in the
silky smooth air, it seemed as though we were floating on a magic carpet or
maybe Santa’s sleigh high above the Christmas lights.
It
was one of those rare and beautiful flights that you remember when all the rest
are blurred and forgotten. Forty years later, the four of us still stay in
touch.
The
next run we made to Florida was in a brand new Cessna 210 Centurion. This
aircraft could make it with one gas stop and turn in a reasonably respectable
cruising speed. A good halfway point for us on the way to Winter Haven was the
Mobile, Alabama airport. When I called for landing instructions the first time
I landed at Mobile I called, “Mobil tower,” pronouncing it like the oil
company. The tower tartly inquired if I was the aircraft calling, “mo-beal
tower.” Seems they had taken issue with the way this Texan had pronounced
Mobile.
Cruising
along the crescent of the Florida gulf coast, it was always tempting to cut a
few miles off by going out over the Gulf of Mexico like the airliners do when
heading for southern Florida. However, prior clearance is needed for crossing
the Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ). In a light single-engine plane, I
just never liked getting farther out over the Gulf than I could glide back to
the shoreline.
Rounding
the Florida Panhandle to head south, there was an old power plant on the west
coast that billowed white smoke. On a clear day, you could spot the steam
coming from the tall smoke stacks of the power plant a hundred miles away. I
would set my heading to the north of the power plant. This heading would
intersect the central Florida railroad line that went right past the Winter
Haven Airport. Navigating, by flying the RR tracks was referred to by old-time
pilots as flying the iron compass.
Walt
Disney had just begun to build Disney World near Orlando about this time and my
brother-in-law wanted me to take the kids for a sightseeing ride over the new
construction rising up out of some orange groves and the middle of an alligator
infested swamp. We cruised around in the Cessna 210, circling the new Disney
World construction site at 500 feet AGL. My brother-in-law got airsick from the
hot bumpy air, but all four of the kids loved it.
The
next trip to Florida was via Twin Cessna N6932L, a model 310k. My wife and
daughter had flown to Florida earlier on a commercial airline flight for a
little extra vacation.
Departing
Fort Worth, I headed for Florida alone in the Cessna 310. Somewhere over
Louisiana, I started wondering if I had remembered to throw my suitcase in the
luggage compartment or not. The twin had a good autopilot, which took a lot of
the work out of the flying. Climbing into the backseat, I peered over the back
seat into an empty luggage compartment. I had left my suitcase sitting on the
ramp when I was doing my preflight. Oh well, I'll buy some Bermuda shorts and a
Hi-wa-yen flowery sport shirt when I get to Florida and forgot about it.
The
twin was equipped with the standard fruit jar rest room, but unlike the
under-powered singles I had previously made the trip in, I could almost stand
up in the back seat with the autopilot on in order to, well you get the
picture.
After stopping at Lakefront Airport
for fueling, I was walking back across the ramp to the airplane when two
hippies approached me. In those days we always called it a ramp, but now the
popular term seems to be tarmac. The two young men inquired as to the
possibility of them hitching a ride with me to Florida. They had heard me
checking the weather in the FBO and the gas boy had probably tipped them off
that they might be able to catch a ride in my plane, as I had no passengers.
They explained that they were
students at some eastern college. Being a little skeptical due to recent Cuba
high jacking incidents, I said, "If you are students, let me see your
student ID cards."
Both quickly produced what looked
like valid college ID and I agreed that they were welcome to ride along.
Anyway, I could use the company. The one riding in the front seat asked if he
could play his harmonica. Flying down the coastline to Gulfport, we sung up ever song this flyer ever knew,
me and hippie Bobby McGee, a real sixties scene. Both boys were very
appreciative for the ride and one of them gave my teenage daughter a handmade
leather belt when she and my wife met me at the airport.
On
our return, stopped for a couple of nights to visit the Vieux Carre, the old
French Quarter. In those days, the new rock levy around Jackson Square had not
yet been built and the JAX brewery occupied much of the riverfront.
We
stayed at the just completed high-rise Marriott Hotel and that evening enjoyed
a wonderful dinner at the restaurant on the top floor. The view at night
overlooking the crescent bend in the Mississippi River, from which New Orleans
gets its nickname the Crescent City was fantastic, almost like flying while
sitting still at the dinner table.
One
of the best stories about losing an engine on a twin was in Florida. This low
time twin-engine pilot had flown over to the Bahamas and was preparing to
return to Miami in his Piper Twin. A young fellow approached the pilot at the
airport and asked if he might hitch a ride back to the mainland with him.
The
pilot agreed and as they prepared to depart, the passenger commented that he
had never flown in a small aircraft before. The pilot dutifully explained that
he had been having trouble with one of the engines on the Piper, but there was
no need for concern because at sea level, the twin-engine plane was quite
capable of making it back to the mainland on one engine.
Sure
enough, halfway back to Miami Beach, the right engine sputtered and started
smoking. The pilot shutdown the engine and flew the twin on to the mainland
where they landed safely.
As
they were getting out of the plane, the passenger told the pilot how much he
appreciated telling him about the engine problem before it actually failed
because he would have panicked if he had not known to expect the problem in
advance. In fact, the passenger went on to say, “You seemed a lot more upset
over the engine failure than I was.”
The pilot gave his passenger an odd
look and said, "You don't understand, it was the good engine that
quit!"
The
Confederate Air Force (CAF) toured the country putting on air shows. I first
heard of them when they held a big air show at Greater Southwest International
Airport in Fort Worth. War Birds were cheap and easy to obtain in those days
and the air group had assembled a great collection of flying WW II aircraft.
The
landing gear on a B-17 can be lowered manually one at a time and so as part of
the air show, the B-17 pilot would fly in low over the field, trailing smoke
with only one landing gear extended. Of course, the pilot didn't touchdown. The
crippled bomber stunt was a real crowd pleaser.
Several
T-6 Texan trainers with Japanese insignias and cockpits modified to look like
Zeros would make diving runs as personnel on the ground set off explosives to
simulate bombs having been dropped. This, of course, was the beginning of what
is now the rather elaborate Tora Tora air show squadron.
When
I joined the CAF, it was still based in Harlingen and the official motto of
their mascot, Colonel Culpepper, was Sipa-mint-julep. In those days, no one
gave much thought about having called it the Confederate Air Force, as it was
all in good fun.
The
weekend I was to officially join the CAF, Doctor Almand was going down in his
red Stagger-wing Beech and an astronaut from Houston was coming in with a fully
restored P-40, painted up like a Flying Tiger. I was inducted the same evening
as the NASA Astronaut along with a couple other flying bums. Needless to say,
not much attention was paid to any of the new members except the honored guest.
The
annual homecoming fly-in and air show in those days was more for the members’
entertainment than for the public. The next day, I wore my new gray khakis with
silver Eagle cufflinks on the collar and gray Stetson indicating that I was now
a Colonel in the CAF.
Members
would line their planes up on the grass beside the runway and with doors
propped open watch from the comfort of the cockpit seats, the best seats in the
house. I had the good sense to stay out of the air show antics because in those
days there were some combat veterans and real pros doing the flying.
I
did, however, attend the pilot’s briefing and recall a handout explaining Rule
23. The info sheet instructed pilots who could not identify the aircraft they
were assigned, to ask any small boy who would then point the airplane out to
them. The instructions for starting an unfamiliar aircraft were to re-arrange
all the shiny switches in the opposite position, leave the rusty ones alone and
the aircraft should start.
Exactly
Where Are We
When
it came time for the annual fly-in and mint julep drinking contest, my wife and
I made plans to attend. I decided we would fly down in an old navy blue Cessna
310B I had recently purchased and was fixing up to resell.
It
was a beautiful morning as we took off and climbed out over the clouds towards
Hillsboro headed for the annual CAF fly-in at Harlingen. The weather along part
of our route from Fort Worth was overcast with the tops at about 5,000 feet,
but a hundred miles south it was severe-clear, an ideal day for jumping over
the top VFR.
The Narco NAV/COM units worked well
enough, but there was a lot of ignition noise coming through the radios.
Somewhere south of Waco, the popping noise in the NAV/COM started to get on my
nerves, so I reached over and turned them off. I already knew the weather was
reporting severe-clear at our destination and so just flew the dead reckoning
heading on my gyrocompass. Never cared much for that term, dead reckoning.
My
wife was holding a WAC chart in her lap and she asked me to show her where we
were at that time. Reaching over, I drew about a four-inch circle on the chart,
somewhere south of Waco. She sat there for a few minutes and then said,
"No, I mean exactly where are we on this chart?"
Finally,
I admitted that I really didn't know, but if we came upon a large body of
water, that would probably be the Gulf of Mexico and we had gone too far. We
would then turn right and when we spotted some orange groves, we would be
pretty close to Harlingen. Her suspicions were confirmed. “Just what I thought,
you pilots don’t even know where you are most of the time!”
PART
II. Private Aviation
A
used car salesman and wheeler-dealer extraordinaire friend of mine by the name
of Guest, was a jovial fellow about my age. He had a line of credit at the bank
for importing and selling foreign cars in Dallas. The only catch was his deal
with the banker required him to turn his inventory every sixty days.
Guest
was a pilot and often traded cars for airplanes and visa versa. When he would
get stuck with an airplane or car too long, he would bring it to me for a swap.
Our
standing deal was that he would guarantee me no loss in or out of our deals.
Subsequently, I let him make any profit on the deals. The result was that I
didn't know from one day to the next whether I would have an almost new
Mercedes at my disposal or some type of weird flying machine that he had taken
in trade.
Guest
kept his planes at the Lancaster Airport, a Cessna 180 tail dragger and a Pitts
Special biplane. I had gone out to the airport to pick Guest up the day he flew
the Pitts in and I heard an old-timer who hung around the airport comment,
"I wouldn't fly it, for it." I intended to go fly the 180 some, but
Guest sold it before I had a chance.
Guest
was returning from Austin in a Mooney 21 and during his descent for landing,
one blade of the constant speed prop on the Mooney broke its retaining ring and
flew off. The remaining half of the out of balance prop jerked the engine off
of its engine mounts. As luck would have it, the engine pulled the cables
attached to the throttle and mixture simultaneously, shutting down the engine.
When
the incident occurred, Guest was not very high and made a wheels-up landing in
an open field. Upon inspection, the engine was lying in the bottom of the
engine cowl. The only thing holding the engine in the aircraft were the cowling
fasteners. If this had been a Cessna on which the cowling mounts to the engine,
the whole front of the aircraft would have fallen off leaving the aircraft
seriously out of CG and the remaining airframe would have tumbled to the ground
out of control.
The
man just lived a charmed life. Guest finally sold his rather valuable antique
racecar collection to a wealthy Dallas businessman. The last time I saw him, he
was promoting his new company, Farm Fresh VWs, a shop out in the country near
Red Oak for re-building Volkswagon Beetles to factory new condition.
After
a year or two of this aero and auto swapping, I ended up with an almost new
Bellanca N4084B, which I was into for well worth the money, so I just kept that
one.
The
Bellanca had a fiberglass wing surface with a heavy wooden main spar and is one
of the strongest light aircraft wings ever marketed. The A&I mechanic who
did my inspections delighted in kidding me about the wood spar. He would hand
me a bill for work he completed and laughingly add that there was no extra
charge for spraying the Bellanca for termites.
That
November, my wife and daughter had again flown via commercial to Florida to
visit her sister. Thanksgiving was coming up, so as soon as I could get away
from business, I was to fly down in the Bellanca to join them. The day before
Thanksgiving, there were scattered broken clouds in Dallas as I departed. The
Bellanca would cruise easily at 220 mph. However, a very unusual phenomenon
occurred. I had a tail wind.
My
ground speed was probably in excess of 250 mph as I leveled out on top of the
cloud layer headed for New Orleans. Inbound to New Orleans, the overcast sky
was broken enough for me to descend and proceed on to Lakefront Airport VFR
rather than having to file IFR with New Orleans Approach Control.
Slowing
the Bellanca down, I descended below the overcast where the ceiling was about
1,500 feet. As I leveled out at 1,000 AGL, I scanned the horizon and there was
nothing except water as far as I could see in any direction. Darn it, I was too
low to pickup the VOR without going back up on top. I knew I had been clipping
along at a really good ground speed, but hadn't realized I had gotten myself
out over the Gulf of Mexico.
Oh
well, land was just to the north and so I turned to a heading of 3-6-0. In a
few minutes, land appeared on the horizon and the shoreline was coming up fast.
It is not possible to see very far cruising at 1,000 feet AGL or in this case
AWL. Most low time pilots who get lost are flying too low. By climbing higher,
they might see a landmark that would orientate them.
As I
made landfall, I was looking right down the approach-end of an excellent
runway. Circling to check the tetrahedron, I entered a standard airport pattern
and landed. Taxiing up to the gas pump I looked around for a sign on the hangar
or some sort of a name that might tell me where the heck I was. A young fellow
came out to fuel the Bellanca. Not wishing to appear lost, I utter the single
corniest line I have ever spoken in my flying career, "Nice airport you
got here. What do you call it?"
The
boy replied, “Hammond Northshore.”
The
name Hammond didn’t register on my brain, but north shore sure did. I realize I
had not been out over the Gulf at all, only over Lake Pontchartrain, a lake so
big I couldn’t see its shore from my altitude.
Checking
the weather before takeoff, a large front to the north had started to move
south. It wasn’t looking good, but I decided to see how far I could get before
dark. Night flying in a single-engine over the Florida swamps was not my favorite
thing to do and I was certainly not going to fly into night conditions and bad
weather both.
Hugging
the coastline from Pass Christian on, I stayed just a little offshore of the
beach to avoid any radio towers and yet close enough to shore so as not to
violate any restricted areas. I radioed a guess of my position to the Air
Defense Zone controller, the ADIZ. We had no transponders in most of our planes
in those days. After a couple of turns for radar identification, the Air Force
controller gave me my position as south of Fort Walton Beach. The weather up
ahead, well lit by the setting sun behind me, looked like a black wall. It was
decision time and so I asked for radar vectors to the nearest airport of any
size. The controller steered me into Destin.
It was a beautifully pitch-black
night, the calm before the storm. Circling the well-lit airfield to read the
tetrahedron, I entered base and turned final only to find myself looking down
the landing lights of a cabin class twin making a straight-in approach for
landing from offshore. Verbalizing a few choice cuss words, I pulled up and
circled in behind the twin. At this particular uncontrolled airfield, the
locals considered the north approach from offshore to be the calm wind runway.
Calm wind meaning, we don’t care which way the tetrahedron is pointing. Oh
well, when in Rome…
The
next morning, after spending the night in a beach resort hotel across the
street from the airport, I checked the weather again. The storm had become occluded
overnight or what I call gone soft. The tops were only 4,000 feet, but it was
300 miles wide and conditions were zero-zero under the cloud layer.
The
edge of the clouds ended right at the shoreline. Notice this the next time you
fly near a shoreline. I believe it’s due to the difference between the land and
water temperatures. I watched as a Cessna 401 took off ahead, headed out over
the Gulf, made a climbing turn and circled back VFR on top. Seemed like a good
idea to me, so I follow him out and on top.
Climbing
out, I set my VOR to Tallahassee and began monitoring approach control. It was
a beautiful sunshiny day on top and the soft white clouds stretched far out
over the horizon. Monitoring the radio, I listened as a Delta jet tried to
shoot an approach at Tallahassee and pulled up at minimums without ever having
the field in sight. The Delta pilot made one more attempt to shoot the
instrument approach before departing for Atlanta, his alternate airport.
My
thinking process went like this. If I loss power on this single-engine
Bellanca, I would have to make a gliding descent through the cloud layer. Of
course, I would attempt to shoot an instrument approach if within gliding
distance of an IFR airport. This may sound a little odd, but above 6,000 feet
AGL, there are usually several good airports within gliding distance. Most
pilots don’t even try for one.
The
reality was that if I descended through the cloud layer, the next sight I would
probably see in my windshield would be the tops of a lot of scrub palms. Those
small palm trees being the dominant vegetation covering that part of the
Florida panhandle. I scrupulously monitored my mixture, exhaust gas temperature
and fuel gages for the next two hours.
An
ol’ timers trick is to save a little fuel in one tank, generally referred to as
saving a couple of gallons for mom and the kids. Then when all the tanks are
run dry except that one, you’re going to have to land somewhere. It’s best to
have a little go-around fuel, just in case.
Northwest
of Gainesville, the soft solid cloud layer started to go broken and a few miles
further, I was bumping along on sunny day thermals. Relaxing in the seat, I
assumed the normal mentally caged-and-locked attitude of most pilots on a long
cross-country flight.
Approaching
the Winter Haven Airport, I entered downwind and the Bellanca's engine quit
cold. Faster than the human eye can see, I went to full forward mixture,
switched tanks and turned the electric fuel pump on. The engine hardly missed a
beat as it resumed its normal purring. I had run the selected fuel tank dry a
few thousand yards from my destination. Sure makes a difference when you pay
attention.
After a week or so I headed back to
Texas in the Bellanca with my wife and daughter. We usually made this flight in
a twin instead of a single. As we flew high above the thick foliage of the
Florida Panhandle, I decided that some instructions on the subject of forced
landing procedures might be appropriate.
I explained that if we had to make an
engine-out landing in the bush covered swampy terrain we were presently flying
over, that just before touchdown, the single door on the right side of the
cockpit was to be popped open. Not to worry, it would not fly all the way open,
as the air stream would keep it in the trail position. This was to prevent the
door from becoming jammed and unable to be opened as a result of a crash
landing.
“If I say, get out! Don't ask why,
just get out.” In particular, if there was any smoke or fire, get out quickly.
As the old joke goes, don’t say huh, cause
you’re gonna to be talkin’ to yourself. A short time later, we
landed for fuel and a cold drink at Fort Walton Beach.
Fuel-injected engines tend to flood
when the engine is hot and will quite often throw a flame out the exhaust
stack. In the event of an exhaust stack fire, the best procedure is to go ahead
and let the engine start so as to blow the flames out of the exhaust. However,
if the fuel explosion in the stack is too great, it can sometimes bust the
exhaust stack brackets.
We
boarded the Bellanca and as I started the hot engine, this was exactly what
happened. The engine sputtered, smoke and flames came out the exhaust for just
an instant. After the engine was running, I decided it would be a good idea to
shut it back down in order to go inspect the exhaust.
Turning
to my two passengers I said, "I need to get out for a minute and check
the…” I stopped mid-sentence when I realized I was talking to myself.
Standing
on the tarmac twenty feet away were my wife and daughter with their arms folded
watching me. I climbed out of the Bellanca laughing. It appeared that they had
been paying attention during my forced landing lecture. “You told us if we saw
smoke or fire to get out, so that’s what we did!”
As
we passed New Orleans enroute back to Dallas, weather advisories were reporting
the autumn storm over east Texas and northern Louisiana was building rapidly. I
was aware of the storm from an earlier briefing, but planned on circling it to
the south via Lake Charles and Houston. We were overtaking the storm and as
objects began floating around in the cockpit, I realized we weren’t going to
make Lake Charles before the storm hit. The nearest airport on our sectional
chart was located right in the middle of the rice-growing belt of Louisiana.
As I
lowered the gear for a straight-in approch to landing, we went by the town’s
water tower. My daughter read the name, “We’re in Eunice,” she said. Two
distinct sounds followed, the screech of the tires on the blacktop runway as we
touched down and the second sound was an erp, muffled by a brown paper bag. The
later sound had emanated from my wife in the back seat who had been taking the
worst of our fishtailing in the rough air.
The
airport's resident mechanic was just closing up and checking the tie downs on
the parked aircraft in preparation for the impending storm. There was no
additional room in the hangar and so he helped me secure the Bellanca on one of
the tie downs.
The
mechanic gave us a lift into Eunice and dropped us at the only motel in town.
The rain had started and the wind was kicking up as we ventured across the
motel parking lot to the restaurant, both incidentally owned by the same Cajun
gentleman.
A
small group of locals were laughing and visiting as we entered. All were
speaking Cajun French. To their credit, when they realized we spoke no French,
all immediately converted to American English. Courtesy still existed in that
small town and we appreciated their making us feel welcome.
Understanding
that our stopover in Eunice was not by choice, the cafe owner, a large rotund
man, introduced himself and joined us at the table. He insisted we try his
mother’s Cajun cooking and it just happened that she was in the kitchen cooking
a specialty called crawfish bisque. He asked if we would like to try a bowl on
the house. My small slender wife, who has always been a real culinary
experimenter, accepted and finished off all three bowls by herself. For the
next several hours, the storm outside raged on as we were treated to a variety
of Cajun home cooking and interesting conversation.
In
the movie JFK, by director Oliver
Stone, the opening scene is of the assistant district attorney standing in the
doorway to Garrison’s office. He says something like, "Hey boss, they just
shot the President." That Assistant DA, retired now, was the owner of the
motel and restaurant and the gentleman we were presently having dinner and
visiting with.
I
guess because we had mentioned we were from Dallas, our host began to tell us
about his experiences working as an assistant to Garrison during the JFK
investigation. He pointed out the window to a small clinic across the street
from where we were sitting and said, “That is where the woman from Dallas was
taken,” and he went on to explain she had been thrown out of a car and left for
dead. He had personally interviewed the woman, a prostitute and former stripper
that had worked at Jack Ruby’s bar. “They are going to kill the President, she
told us, but she wouldn’t or couldn’t tell us who they were.”
We
heard the story from beginning to end and it was exactly the same as the story
told in the movie, with one exception. We were being told the story ten years
before the movie was made.
When
the café closed, we went to our motel room and checked the weather. It appeared
the storm was now going to rage for some time. The next morning, we rented a
car and drove back to Dallas. Driving out of the storm, we saw trees uprooted
and pieces of buildings everywhere. The decision to land and not attempt to
cross the mother of all storms had been a good one.
An
instructor pilot, who had wanted to log some time in the Bellanca, caught a
ride with a student pilot down to Eunice that weekend and returned the Bellanca
back to Love Field for me.
One
of the other airplanes I bought from Guest was a T-6 Texan military trainer.
Actually, it was a Navy SNJ version. The FAA did not have provisions for
certifying an SNJ for civilian use, so the aircraft had to first have all of
the service bulletins incorporated for it to become a T-6 and then it could be
licensed as a private aircraft.
Needing
to meet the requirements for checkout in type for the higher performance
aircraft, I had Guest bring the T-6 over to Amon Carter Field. Guest explained
that he wouldn’t fly the T-6 from the back seat, so he climbed in the front and
said he would go around the pattern a couple of times with me while I tried to
land the T-6 from the backseat.
In a
normal taxi or flare-out, it is hard to see over the nose of the T-6 from the
backseat. In the early days of WW II, I had been told that the young Air Corps
and Navy cadet fighter pilots had to be able to takeoff and land these trainers
from the backseat before they flew the single-seat fighters. Anyone who has
ever sat in a WW II tail-wheel fighter aircraft like the P-40 or Corsair can
understand why.
On
my takeoff in the T-6, using the long concrete runway, I quickly raised the
tail and made my takeoff roll on the main wheels. The T-6 flew exactly like a
small DC-3.
Flying
the pattern, I turned final, lined up with the runway and established a slow
rate of descent. As I assumed a nose-high attitude for touchdown, I watched out
the right side of the cockpit for the large blue Butler Aviation hanger to go
by. As I passed the hanger, I eased the power off and made a perfect
three-point landing the first time.
Guest
allowed as how he couldn't make a landing any better than that from the front
seat. “Beginners luck,” I replied modestly and it mostly was. We flew back to
Lancaster Airport to drop Guest off and he made the landing in the T-6 from the
front seat. The old Lancaster airport only had a short north-south landing
strip in those days.
Climbing
in the front seat for the first time, I taxied out to the end of the runway and
began my takeoff roll. There was a strong right crosswind and before I could
get the tail wheel up, the P-factor kicked in and I drifted to the far left
side of the airstrip. The yellow cones protecting the landing strip runway
lights were starting to move under my left wing and I figured that in about a
second or two, my left main landing gear was going to start knocking out
lights.
Keeping
the plane straight with the rudder, I laid the stick over to the right and had
enough aileron control to lift the T-6 onto its right main gear until it got
enough air speed to lift off, now known as the ol’ one wheel takeoff technique.
The
factory installed military tube-type radios had long since been pulled out of
the T-6 and trashed. Someone had installed a Narco transceiver that worked
fairly well except that the aircraft had no ignition or fuel pump noise
suppression filters. The trainer’s radio had a lot of static. At cruise power,
I could barely hear over my headset and had to throttle back in order to call
the tower.
Thus,
standard procedure for entering the radio-controlled pattern at Amon Carter
Field was to approach the control zone at cruise speed, retard the throttle and
glide momentarily while contacting the tower. Coming back up on the power and
entering downwind in a glide lessened the static enough to hear clearance for
landing. Wind noise from flying open cockpit made it worse.
First
Airplane To Land On DFW
When
work on the new Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW) regional Airport began, the crews
worked seven days a week. One Sunday afternoon, while I was out flying the T-6,
I noticed all the construction equipment was parked and no one was on site. I
approached from the north, lowered my landing gear and made a long straight-in
approach to the new main runway. The wheels touched, I applied throttle and was
airborne again.
No
one saw me or at least I never heard anything about it if they did. Thus, I had
been the first plane to land at the new airport. Several weeks later, a North
American Jet Star landed at DFW with official permission. A photo of the jet
along with the headline, “First plane to land on the new airport,” were on the
front pages of the Dallas Morning News and Fort Worth Star Telegram, but I knew
better.
Albuquerque
My
brother graduated from college in Albuquerque and decided to stay. The Cessna
310 was now being used for going west to Albuquerque as well as southeast to
Florida. VFR enroute from Dallas to Albuquerque, I was trying to beat a weather
front, but it didn’t work out and we had to land at a small airport in Santa
Rosa, New Mexico.
The
airport's ramp was full of socked-in cross-country light aircraft. Pilots going
west had landed to wait for the front to pass. Most were not instrument rated,
but I was. After calling Albuquerque and discovering that there were no
imbedded thunderstorms and that the front had become stationery, I filed an IFR
flight plan and we loaded up to depart.
I recall
a half dozen VFR light airplane pilots watching wishfully as we taxied out.
Immediately after takeoff, we went full IFR and maintained a full-power climb.
No matter how many times I had made this particular flight, when I knew there
were rocks on both sides of me, I didn’t relax until I knew we were well clear
of the highest mountain peak in any direction. At about 14,000 feet, we punched
out of the top of the clouds and could see Mt. Taylor off in the distance. It
was clear as far as the eye could see from Sandia Mountain west.
East
of Albuquerque is the Tijeras Pass that lies between Sandia and the Montoya
range to the south. It’s a good idea not to fly through the Pass, but go over
one of the mountain peaks, which are only about 10,000 feet because the air
currents in the pass are bad most of the time.
One
thing I learned the hard way is not to forget that the airspeed indicator reads
a little slow when landing at a high altitude airport. The first time I landed
at Coronado Airport north of Albuquerque in the Cessna 310 twin, I approached
the runway at my usual indicated landing speed. I used up the entire runway and
was pumping the brakes so as not to run off the north end of the runway and
onto the dirt overrun. Put there, I assume, for sea level pilots like myself.
There
are certain terrains around the country where an airplane seems to always go
into what pilots call automatic-rough. One such place is the arid valley
between Santa Rosa and Moriarity. Coming off the backside of Sandia Mountain on
a hot afternoon headed east, an airplane will not stay level.
Even
at 14,000 feet, it’s a rough ride. The wings rock all the time. First you’re up
300 feet and then down 200 feet. That's the ride until you get back down off
the high plains on a hot day. An autopilot helps take some of the work out, if
you have one. Otherwise, it’s like riding in a jeep on a rough road, just relax
and roll with the bumps!
The
first time I heard the phrase “balloon races,” I laughed out loud. How do you
race in a hot air balloon? The balloon competitions held in Albuquerque were
originally called the World Hot Air Balloon Championships, but is now generally
referred to as the Balloon Festival.
Twenty
plus years ago, Cutter Aviation, the local Beechcraft dealer, sponsored the
first balloon event at the main Albuquerque airport. Cutter's son had become
interested in hot air ballooning. He and some of his cronies dreamed the whole
thing up. When they decided to hold it a second year in an open field down by
the Rio Grande, we attended. We were thrilled at the 85 or so hot air balloons
that showed up. Now the event annually attracts over 1,000 balloons of every
shape and size from all over the world the first full weekend of October.
While
balloon racing sounds like an oxymoron, it turns out that it’s not. Balloons
move with the wind currents. In the unique valley where Albuquerque lies, the
wind currents move in different directions at different altitudes. Thus, by
changing the balloon's altitude, it can be navigated directionally.
Two
very successful businessmen, Max and Ben, were local Albuquerque balloonists
who became famous by setting world hot air balloon records. One afternoon, my
brother called me from Albuquerque to say, “I just went up with Max.”
“Didn't
even know you were interested in ballooning,” I replied. He laughed and went on
to explain that he wasn't, but while at his bank, he had ridden up in the
elevator with Max.
Max
was killed in a suspicious balloon crash near the Soviet border. Ben crashed sometime
later in his personal cabin class twin. Taking off from Albuquerque
International Airport on a ski trip, the nose luggage compartment came open and
something flew into the prop. Attempting to turn back onto the airport runway,
the aircraft spun into the ground killing all on board.
Las
Vegas, Nevada was an easy flight from Albuquerque in the Cessna 310 and we
started flying out there more often. The weekend of my brother’s college
graduation, we left Albuquerque in heavy overcast conditions and flew down the
valley towards Acoma until I was able to climb out through the broken clouds.
As
we climbed to VFR on top, I inched up to 14,500 feet in order to get over the
top of a small ridge of thunderstorms. I was rattling away, talking when I
realized I was carrying on a conversation with myself. My four passengers were
sound asleep. Waking everyone up, I told them that they couldn't sleep at this
altitude due to the danger of hypoxia and that in just a few more minutes I
could descend back down to 10,000 feet.
We
were over the desert and from my own experience I’ve found that you can fly
higher over mountains without the same loss of oxygen. I know of no studies on
this, but my personal theory is that the vegetation that produces the oxygen is
higher up in the atmosphere and thus, the mountain air is a little richer in
oxygen than the air over sea and desert.
Flying
back from Vegas on a summer day in the Cessna 310, I decided to drop down and
have a look at the meteor crater near Winslow, Arizona. After buzzing the
crater, I landed at the Winslow airport to give my passengers a break and treat
everyone to a cold drink.
Winslow
was one of those small one-airline airports that an air carrier out of
California flew an old Convair into once a day. The Eagles song, Take It Easy seemed to have taken on a
surreal meaning that afternoon.
Lifting off from Winslow on the hot,
bumpy afternoon, the ol' 310 went into automatic-rough as we climbed out. As I
lowered the nose, it looked as though 160 mph was all she was going to do. At
that point, my brother who was riding in the right seat looked down at the red
indicator light on the gear handle and suggested that we might make better time
if I’d retract the landing gear. I guess that’s better than forgetting to put
the gear down.
McCarran Field
The
airport at Las Vegas, an AAC base during WW II has about as strange a history
as the casino town itself. When I first started flying into McCarran, Howard
Hughes’ Summa Corporation operated the FBO. At one time, Hughes had offered to
buy McCarran Field and build Las Vegas a new international airport farther out
of town. They should have taken him up on it because the Las Vegas Strip has
now overtaken the airport.
The
old burned-down Rancho Las Vegas was still standing when I first started going
to Vegas. One could still feel the ghosts of the old ‘30s and ‘40s Hollywood
crowd haunting the place. The early Las Vegas Strip, known by old timers as the
County Line, included large parcels of barren land covered with sand and
limestone gravel. Hughes bought up much of this land with funds from the sale
of TWA.
On
the corner of McCarran Airport, nearest the Strip, was a small startup aircraft
manufacturing company. The land was part of the airport, thus preventing
developers from grabbing it up. The property was isolated from the taxiways by
a large drainage ditch, effectively preventing access to the airport and owed
its existence to some politically motivated reason.
The
owner, president and promoter of the aircraft company lived on the property not
far from the combination showroom, hangar and factory. He was an interesting,
but rather eccentric older gentleman whose dream was to build a small private
jet aircraft called the Starship.
On
one of my frequent flights into McCarran, I decided to pay a visit to the
Starship’s promoter. Actually, I just knocked on his door and introduced
myself. He was gracious enough to give me a private tour of his then
financially defunct enterprise. In the middle of a hangar-showroom, stood a
full-scale mock-up of the Starship. The most unique feature I can recall of the
aircraft’s design was that it had an unusually wide and stubby fuselage.
The
interior was reminiscent of an old, large airliner’s cockpit with no center
aisle. Passengers sat three abreast with a panoramic view of the cockpit
overlooking a roomy flight deck. Of course, the design was not practical from
an aerodynamic standpoint, but it was one of the most unique designs for a
small corporate jet that I had ever seen.
Don’t
know what ever happened to the promoter and his Starship project, but obviously
someone in cahoots with the county was trying to force him out of business. I
was interested at the time because it would have made a great FBO and indeed,
it became and still is just that. They were flying Grand Canyon sightseeing
tours out of the place last time I noticed.